Tragedy Deferred
by Shanghai1875
Summary: Sequel to The Dark Knight, a dramatic Nolanverse retelling of the story MAD LOVE. With the Joker out of Arkham, Harleyquinn tastes both fear and freedom, but will anything bring her back to the girl Jim and Bruce once knew?
1. Chapter 1: Beige

Her father used to say: "Harley, spiteful words can hurt your feelings, but silence breaks your heart."

It was a line that she kept repeating over and over again in her head when she stepped through the nearly empty halls of Arkham Asylum. The walls were once sloppily painted a muted taupe color, and the only thing that seemed to stand out was the screaming. It wasn't constant, but once in every so often a loud, piercing sound of anguish would move throughout the halls. It was enough to make you think that the place was haunted by souls that clung to life. It was enough to make Dr. Harleen Quinzel question what living _really_ was. She knew this wasn't it.

She had just come away from a morning session with a patient; a non-violent sexual offender who had been diagnosed delusional paranoid. He believed that his victims had been following him because they were attracted to him. He thought Harley was attracted to him. She wasn't.

He had said to her "I think you're more than you seem, Dr. Quinzel," and she gave him the blank, unenthusiastic stare that she would give any patient who assumed he knew more about her than he actually did. "I think you're a wild cat underneath that librarian get-up of yours." Although she had done absolutely nothing to suggest anything wilder then her current personality, she had noticed in his file that the powers that be were in the process of deciding whether or not chemical castration was an option for this patient. When Harley had finally stepped out of his cell, she was beginning to wonder if maybe it was a good idea.

Now she was floating through harshly lit hallways, seemingly endless aisles of door after door, their occupants bound, tied down, a danger to themselves, each other, and her. And yet somehow in the center of her chest she felt pity for them; some misplaced sense of sympathy where she believed that maybe not everyone could take responsibility for their actions - a mindset that was not shared by the majority of the elderly staff there are Arkham. Some of them were considered the very best in the country, but their practices were old school, and their ethics were tarnished to say the very least.

Harley knew that she was young, and had not yet become jaded by the world that she had suddenly become a part of.

"Commissioner Gordon is a friend of your family. Put in a good word for you," Dr. Jeremiah Arkham had said during her entrance interview. "Some members of the board found it to be a little disreputable by offering up a reference from someone that you know would have the respect of this facility." Harley had always heard that he was a bastard, but tried to keep her calm just the same. "But when we realized that James Gordon had offered up his reference of his own accord...well then!"

He clapped his hands together so loud that Harley had nearly jumped out of the Italian leather chair that she had been seated in. "Well then, we're in business. It's always nice to have someone powerful act as a little padding on your resume, isn't it?"

Bastard _indeed_, but Harley had smiled none-the-less and had found herself in the middle of a two year paid internship at the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. She was fresh-faced, sweet, well liked by the staff and patients alike. She maintained that everyone could be treated, and that everyone deserved to. It wasn't that kind of humanist mentality that got her through college, but it got her into Arkham, which was exactly where she wanted to be.

Except... well, except that she didn't think it would be this dismal.

Some of the nurses and orderlies had been working there since they graduated medical college in the seventies. They were too rough with the patients, lost most, if not all of their sympathy, and were used to treating people more like cattle than anything else. They sickened her, but she managed to put on a kind face and wave to them as she passed by.

"Smile and the world smiles back at you Harl. Cry, and you cry alone," her father always used to say to her. But as the days went on at Arkham, she realized that attitude wasn't everything.

After the first week people told her to stop smiling so much, or doctors were going to start to believe that she was the crazy one. After the first month people didn't notice whether she was smiling or not. She had begun blending into the walls. Maybe at first her ego was the one that convinced her that she was going to change things around here... but now she knew: you can't change a place like this. She knew Arkham was here before and would be here long after she was gone.

Something had begun to grind at her. It wasn't the jaded co-workers, the manipulative doctors, or the psychotics who had sometimes threatened to slice her up.

It was the silence.

Everywhere she walked in that place was filled with it. It seeped into the cracks in the aging concrete, filled the holes of patients mouths, while darkness filled their eyes. There wasn't anything in this place was wasn't touched by it. The few sounds that were made seemed only to accentuate the quiet. Things like footsteps coming down a hall, a ticking clock, or the ding of a distant elevator just made the silence that much deeper.

Over the first couple weeks Harley had come to appreciate the peace and quiet, but there was a sense of horror that filled her. Just as you had learned to take it for granted, the stillness of the place was shattered by a long, terrified, torturous scream. The first time she heard it she had been in her first week-end meeting with doctor Arkham. She had placed her hands to her ears and wished very much that she could crawl under the small desk hiding in the midst of her cramped office.

He had laughed at her lack of experience, she was white as a sheet. "My dear, my dear!" Arkham said in his patronizing tone. "You can't expect this place to be quiet all the time, can you?"

Except it was. Apart from the occasional scream, whispered exchanged between co-workers, or footsteps in the hallway there was never any sound. And it left Harley feeling as though she was falling into the same pit the rest of them found themselves at the bottom of. As much as she didn't want to turn into the old men that ran this place... she was beginning to understand why they had become the way they had become.

With the gentle ding of the elevator, Harley had slipped out of the sliding doors and down along the corridor on the main floor where her office was located. Regardless of its sinister reputation the building was quite old and beautiful. A large, wooden, handcarved staircase led up to the executive offices and meeting rooms that adorned the front entrance. The outside was dark gray stone with iron gates that matched the Gothic tone of some of Gotham's old architecture. There was reception, along with a nurses' station at the front, and Harley's broom closet of an office located just fifty meters away from the front door. She remembered thinking, _if one of the psychos decides to burn down the joint, at least I'll be close to the door._

It was late at night, past midnight... maybe even past one. She had become renowned around the place for being the one who never seemed to go home. Indeed, there had been times when Harley had woken up in a start at her desk, a piece of her casework sticking to her face. She'd known how embarrassing it was to have to wear the same clothes to work the next day and not have a raunchy story to tell about the night before.

As Harley made her way down the hall and toward her office, she briefly passed a coworker who smiled and waved at her. She was young and fresh out of school like Harley, but had been taken on as an intern nurse. Sometimes they would eat lunch or dinner together (depending on the time of day) in the common area and talk about the thick-skinned doctors, or hopeful patients who looked like they were making a turn around. Her name was Molly, and sometimes her voice was the only voice she heard all day.

They exchanged a friendly hello in the hallway before Harley slipped into her office and closed the door behind her. She leaned back against the door, at once inhaling deeply and gazing disappointedly. Her makeshift office had once been a storage room for case-files of sociopathic murderers who had come to their untimely deaths in the halls of Arkham. The orderlies had offered to clean it out for her and move everything down to the basement, but she had been reading them in her free time, and was learning a lot from the plethora of notes left in the wake of the patients.

In the middle of a sea of paper was a small desk along with a large chair fashioned out of old golden flannel. It sat upon a very squeaky axis that was often the sound to wake her up whenever she fell asleep. There were a couple of folding chairs across the desk, meant for guests, but which had only ever been used by Dr. Arkham. She wouldn't have invited guests in here to save her life. She was sure that instead of a therapist she'd look more like some sort of a social worker: underpaid and overworked. Which wasn't too far from the truth...

Taking another look at the clock she had moved her lab coat over her shoulder to slip it off and hang it on the back of the door, but then...

The sound made her freeze. The clamor of doors crashing open, scuffling, and a woman screaming. Hurriedly sliding her arms back into her coat, she opened the door, which caused the hem to buffet in the sudden rush of cool air as people rushed in from outside.

"Restrain him!" came Arkham's voice, booming at the top of his lungs as he made his way down the beautiful woodgrain stairs.

Harley's shocked face turned down the hall to see what was the matter. "Dr. Arkham?" she called out to him. Immediately he turned to wave her back into her office, but said nothing.

Everything after this appeared to move slowly, like the instant before a car crash. The situation seemed hopelessly real, and yet simultaneously part of some wild and crazy dream. Everything was cloudy, surreal, absolute.

From the front doors and around the corner, past the nurse's station a group of five SWAT officers were grappling to restrain one man. From the time he entered into the wide hallway he seemed to have enchanted everyone with his presence. Maybe it was because they couldn't believe what they were seeing, maybe it was because he seemed to fill the room with his terrifying, maniacal laughter, but for Harley, it wasn't fear, or shock, or awe that encapsulated her - it was the sheer noise that drew her like a moth to flame.

She had seen the newspapers, the tabloids, and the articles written to paint the man as a true monster, a full-blown psychopath. He was taller than she expected, larger in the shoulders. Although there had been whispers... no one was ever really sure if he would ever be caught, let alone brought to Arkham.

The Joker had arrived, and was making his presence known to all who cluttered the halls at 1:33 that morning.

"Heya Doc!" He excitedly addressed Dr Arkham as he was pulled further within the building by the SWAT team. "Heard so much about you. Say, can you do a guy a favor, I got a couple of 'scrips that need refilling," he said, laughing. Harley immediately noticed that he was covered in blood, but it appeared to be his own.

"I'm sure you do," Arkham had remarked quietly. Internally Harley scoffed at his need to have the final word in every argument.

The group of men was walking down the hallway toward her when one of the members of the SWAT team told her, "Ma'am, please get back to your office."

She knew that the worst thing he could have done was to acknowledge her. She knew this because as soon as the SWAT officer was finished speaking, her eyes shot over to the Joker who was already looking at her. As they approached she could see his gaze follow her. She didn't break eye contact for a second.

When she was young, Harley's father had caught a Missasauga rattlesnake in their backyard. One bite could have killed the five-year-old version of herself twice over, and yet when her father held it up for her to inspect, she could remember that her heart didn't miss a beat.

But now, with those black eyes looking back at her, she swore she forgot to take a breath.

Although most of the war-paint had been smeared and smudged away, he couldn't have looked more sinister; except for when he squinted his eyes and turned his grin into an alarming full smile of yellow teeth. "Well helllllo _nurse_," he cooed at her and chuckled. "And what's your name?"

Arkham, who was closely picking up the rear, cut in, "You will address all the Doctors in this facility as _Sir_ or _Ma'am_. Do you understand?"

Harley gasped for breath after the group strode past her door, thinking that maybe it was over, but before she had even finished exhaling the Joker sharply pulled to the right and freed himself from one of the SWAT members, twisting to look at her once again. "Oh ho! A doctor, huh? You must be pretty smart. I'm pretty smart too. Maybe we could have a deep intellectual conversation over a cup of coffee?" Although she couldn't see them, through the black paint she could tell he raised his brows, because the dark space around his eyes grew drastically larger.

"Settle down!" Harley was shocked by Arkham's strength as he immediately grabbed the large man and turned him back around. "The only conversing you're going to do is over a stainless steel table in a windowless room."

"Are you coming on to me, Doc?" his sinister voice cackled as the group continued down the hall and toward the freight elevator. Nurses and orderlies rushed breathlessly after them, but Harley stood by her door, watching the commotion and hearing that continuous, high pitched, uproarious laughter.

Suddenly the spaces hollowed out by the silence here were filled with life again. There was a shift in Harley's heart from dismal to something less empty, less finite. The noise seemed to fill in the spaces where there had been doubt about her role in Arkham Asylum. That laughter soothed her soul.

And before she could take it back, before she could force it to disappear, she could feel herself smile.


	2. Chapter 2: Assumption

"Jim Gordon. M'here to see ADA Wright," he said in his usual calm and quiet tone. His glasses reflected the light from outside, and a young paralegal who sat behind the desk in front of him couldn't look directly into his eyes. She did, however, take the time to be overly courteous to him, which was one thing about being police commissioner that Jim didn't mind too much. His days of getting mouthed off to were over.

"Oh, Commissioner Gordon!" she said in a sing-song voice, standing so she didn't have to strain her vision. He shook her hand, and her grip was firmer than he had expected. "Carl's been waiting for you. Come with me, I'll show you to his office."

Briefcase at his side, he strode down a long corridor with multiple offices on either side. The place was filled with Banker Boxes and teemed with activity. More young female paralegals rushed from one office and into another, each of them sparing a second to smile at him. Jim was beginning to think that maybe there were some perks to this job after all, and by the time he had made his way into ADA Wright's office he was wearing his usual sheepish smile.

"Ah! Jim. Thanks for coming by." Wright leaned over the desk to shake his hand. "I know you don't have a lot of time, but as you can probably, tell the office is going crazy." Carleton Wright was one of the youngest lawyers on the side of the prosecution, but probably the most decorated. He was three years out of Harvard Law School and, despite lucrative offers to work as a defense lawyer in Metropolis, he'd come back to Gotham to work for the prosecution. That job, unfortunately, came with a considerably smaller paycheck. Gordon hated that people who associated with bad men often made more money. Something about that seemed backwards to him.

Wright's office was this busy was because of the fact that he had been assigned the Joker's case. The ADA was gathering as much information as he could for the arraignment, the day after tomorrow. The Joker had been captured a week ago today, and for the moment was being held in Arkham Asylum. Wright knew that the dramatic events of that evening had centered around Gordon, and because of this Wright had offered to privately take his statement in his office, promising only to call on him as a witness if the case went to criminal court.

Jim shook his hand a little more firmly as the two of them sat down. "I'm a stickler for procedure myself. It was a very hectic night, so please forgive me if I have to amend my statement later on."

Carleton waved his hand to dismiss his concern, and his understanding expression put Jim at ease. "You take your time, remember what you can, and if we need to add and amend later on, then that's fine. If this does go to trial, it's not going to be for at least a year. You'll have plenty of time to remember everything you need to, but I do need some kind of statement from you by the time his arraignment rolls around."

The way he spoke so casually about it, Jim couldn't help but wonder about the young man's ego himself. The thought of sitting in the same room as the Joker made Jim's spine tingle. "Day after tomorrow, huh?" he asked, and then cracked a bit of a smile. "Young ADA like you? How are you keeping your anxiety in check?"

"Anxiety?" Wright was making a couple of last minute notes, shuffling paper across his desk. He wrote the date on a yellow note pad and grinned as he scribbled down the case number and Jim's name. "No, Commissioner. I know the charges are pretty high-profile, but a criminal is a criminal is a criminal, right?" Wright's eyes didn't even leave the page until he was finished speaking.

Jim expected that his face must have been pretty twisted up, since when Wright finally did look up he appeared taken aback. "Well, being in the position that I'm in, I'm inclined to disagree." There was a pause. Jim crossed one trousered leg over the other and took a breath. "Don't underestimate him."

The commissioner was not pleased. The arrogance that he was getting out of Wright was typical of the young men in his generation - kids looking to prove themselves to their overachieving parents, took on too much work, thought they could do anything. Some called it confident, Jim called it cocky.

"I don't mean to upset you, Commissioner. I just think that, with the amount of evidence that we're collecting, we'll be able to put him away for a very long time." The young attorney tried back-pedaling quickly, but Gordon gave him a look over his glasses that told him that he easily saw through his remark.

"This case isn't going to criminal court. I can already tell you what's going to happen." Folding his hands on top of his knee he looked over to the counselor, who seemed relatively interested in what Gordon had to say.

"Well, regardless, I'm still going to require your statement."

"And I'm not averse to giving it to you, but I'm being honest with you when I tell you that the Joker is not your average everyday criminal. You'll see that come Friday, and so will the judge, which is why he's going to offer the Joker some kind of an observational period at Arkham, which will give you some time to pull your act together," Gordon told him, quickly and quietly. People like Wright didn't take well to being corrected, but the last thing he wanted to happen was to have this young ADA flub the case because of his ego.

"We have him on fifteen counts of murder, Commissioner!" Wright told him, exasperated.

"Do you? Or are you hoping that you'll going to get a sympathetic jury? You might think you have him on fifteen murders, but what about Richard Dent, or Patrick Harvey, even Brian Luther? There's no forensic evidence linking the Joker to any of those murders. If there had been the Joker would have a name right now." Sighing heavily and shaking his head, Gordon leaned back in his chair. "If you're lucky you'll get him on one, two of the murders, tops."

He could tell that Wright felt defeated. It was true that the police had collected little to no information on who the Joker was, and certainly not enough to indict him on the fifteen counts of suspected murder. There were video tapes, but most of the evidence was circumstantial. "So what do I do?" Wright asked, a pleading look on his face. Jim knew that he needed to win this case. Gotham was without a District Attorney, and if Wright wanted that job, he was going to have to step up and convict the Joker.

"Let the system work for you," Gordon said. "Let the judge grant the Joker this observational period. Collaborate with the people who are treating him and push for a diagnosis of '_sane_' to come back from the observation. You friend up one of the psychiatrists there, and it won't be hard to convince them that the Joker had a motive against the police and against Batman...which can prove he _was _sane at the time of his crimes." Jim appeared deep in thought for a moment... it wouldn't be that simple. "Dealing with Jeremiah Arkham will be hard. He has a tendency to want to keep high-profile criminals in his facility."

Wright frowned in confusion. "What on Earth for?"

Shrugging and rolling his eyes, Jim didn't seem too impressed by what he was about to say. "Press. Arkham loves the attention." He waved off the idea. "He's the lowest of the low."

"So what you're saying is that I have my work cut out for me."

Gordon gave the boy a sympathetic glance. "You have a lot of promise for an ADA. Coming from someone who knew Dent personally, I see a bit of him in you. He never used to take well to gentle suggestion, but he'd been doing your job for a long time before he because the District attorney. Just take your job seriously, don't try to rush things, and you'll be able to ring a criminal conviction out of the Joker. But in order to get him, you need to be as meticulous as he is. Don't skip anything."

His encouragement seemed to lend a little bit of hope to the young man, who offered the commissioner a smile and a nod. "What do you say we get your statement out of the way?" Wright asked quietly.

Gordon nodded slowly and leaned forward. He'd deeply wished he wouldn't have to relive the day, but as he spoke, he did so as he did everything else: gracefully.


	3. Chapter 3: Silence

"What do you mean he's not talking? The man is a common-case narcissist with delusions of grandeur." Harley ran her hand through her dark brown hair and rested her elbow on one of the several long plastic picnic tables in Arkham Asylum's common room.

The sheer simplicity of the Joker's psychosis made her think she was developing a superiority complex. Thinking that someone fresh out of school could do the job better than someone with thirty years in the field was insane. _Why haven't they have figured it out?_ Harley had wondered as she sat across from Molly. Her friend was telling her what she had overheard one of the other doctors say about his experience with Arkham's newest crown jewel. Each therapist working in the facility was taking a shot at the Joker one at a time. Much to Harley's chagrin, she knew she wasn't to be included among them. There was no way that Dr. Arkham would take that kind of a risk with an intern.

"You gotta understand, for someone with that kind of mindset keeping your mouth shut is the psychological equivalent to climbing up Mount Everest while doing a hand-stand. It just doesn't happen, you know?" Molly was a couple years younger than Harley, with mulatto skin and a lot of dark curly hair. She was beautiful, and one of those people who was just genuinely nice. Molly was outgoing, popular, and led an eventful life; constantly telling great stories about her weekends. It was hard not to be jealous. She was exciting, colorful, vibrant... three things that Harley wasn't.

From where she sat across from Harley in the taupe cafeteria, Molly just shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know Harl. I don't think he's been dead silent, but he isn't giving in and spilling his life story just yet. It's been, what, a week now...? He'll be duping the doctors into thinking is he's letting go of some pent-up, dramatic tale, then he drops the ball on them and laughs in their faces." Mindlessly she poked her fork into a large bite of salad.

Harley looked off, deep in thought. Giving her a strange glance, Molly sat up and leaned to the side in order to enter the daydreamer's field-of-vision. "What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall in that room."

Molly rolled her eyes and waved the thought away with her plastic fork. "Are you kidding?" she asked with a full mouth. "You've been reading too many of those case files in your room. Just because you're dealing with non-violent offenders doesn't mean that dealing with violent ones is going to be more exciting... just more dangerous." She shook her head. "Besides, I get the feeling that it's just the Joker sitting across from an old man in a chair. They're not interrogating the Joker because they want to. They're interrogating him because it's good for their careers."

"Heh, yeah." Harley wiped her mouth with a napkin. "I can see it now," she said, using her hand to trace a headline in the air. "_Dr. Jeremiah Arkham is Time Magazine's Man of the Year_." giving a disappointed snort, she shook her head and continued. "Are you joking me? Don't you have to _care_about your patients before you can treat them?"

"Harley!" Molly chided her and wagged her finger disapprovingly. "Don't say stuff like that. Arkham has ears all over this place. Sooner or later you'll get caught with your foot in your mouth and he'll have you out the door so fast it'll make your head spin."

Maybe there was one thing Harley held over her. The fact that no matter what came out of Molly's mouth, she always felt more intelligent than her. She was a nurse, and psychologically couldn't understand the passionate interest that was boiling inside Harley's veins. The pursuit of something treatable, of goal of bringing resurfacing problems and past traumas to light, the appreciation a patient has toward their doctor; these were things Molly would never understand... but it wasn't enough to replace the lack of action in adventure that Harley's life was sorely missing.

Bobbing her head from side to side, Harley eventually nodded her agreement. It was true, Arkham's ears were everywhere in this place. Considering the education level of most of the people who worked here, Harley thought the politics and the gossip would be kept to a minimum. It seemed that every time she turned around someone was ratting someone else out.

"Besides," Molly went on, "he's not worth it. You're a good doctor. Play your cards right..." She picked up her tray and stood, winking at Harley. "Maybe Arkham will give _you_ the honor of force-feeding the Joker his useless questions."

"Molly!" Harley pretended to chide her back as she stepped over the table's bench and toward the door. She let out a heavy sigh after Molly had gone. There was, again, no way that Arkham would let her interrogate the Joker. She had six months of active therapy under her belt; the Joker would chew her up and spit her out. She knew it, Arkham knew it, and every damn doctor on the board knew it.

She tapped her fork against her plate, turning her stare back toward nowhere. Maybe it was her lack of confidence, or a fool-hearted case of reverse psychology, and maybe if she denied it enough it might come true. Harley wasn't delusional enough to believe that, because she _knew_ Dr. Arkham would never comply, deep down she was at least delusional enough to wish that he would.

* * *

"Not guilty by reason of insanity, your honor."

The Joker's court-appointed lawyer was a small little Jewish man who seemed to quiver next to his client as he sat at court, restrained to the bolted-down table with handcuffs. The Joker was hardly paying attention, constantly distracted by other objects in the room, at one point snatching a pen from his lawyer and spinning it around in his fingers.

Lifting his brows with a chuckle, Judge Masters glanced down at the file in front of him. "Heh, well, that's...convenient."

Polished, and suited for his predicted success Assistant District Attorney Wright was ready, appearing as commanding and as self-righteous as ever. Following the judge's choice comment, he stood up from the prosecution's desk and handed another folder of his evidence to the bailiff. He'd spent the better part of the last week preparing for this. long nights at the office, Chinese food straight from the carton, and early morning cups of coffee from the Starbucks around the corner. All of this hard work had been for this, and now he was going to put the screws to the defense. "Considering the severity of the Joker's crimes, the People are requesting full incarceration at Blackgate Penitentiary, without bail," he said rather enthusiastically, and didn't take his eyes off the judge for a moment.

The judge, on the other hand, was considerably more laid back. William Masters presided over the case and was presently leaning back in his chair, tapping his pen against the pristine oak bench. He was an older man, balding, with half-moon glasses and a smile so practiced you couldn't tell at any given moment whether he was being genuine or simply blowing smoke up your ass. He'd placed his ruling on some of the most influential cases in Gotham over the last fifteen years, and he had the reputation of being one of the fairest judges in the supreme court. Some said that he was the only judge in the city who truly kept justice blind, as she should have been.

"So, Mr. Wright...not that I'm saying that we will," he started, turning his hand up to make a theoretical statement, "but if were to go to trial this very moment, you're telling me that you would be able to indict the Joker on _all_fifteen counts of murder and...737 counts of attempted murder?" When the judge turned his eyes back to the prosecutor, the young man seemed to freeze.

From the other side of the courtroom, the Joker leaned forward in his chair and gazed over at Carleton Wright, who fought to keep his eyes locked away from him. From the corner of his vision, Wright could see that his scarred lips were twisted into the kind of smirk that just dared the ADA to say _Yes_. He might have appeared infallible to Gordon, but he sure didn't feel that way.

For Judge Masters, his silence was the only answer he needed. With a faint grin, the older gentleman nodded, looking down with wry amusement to the files before him. "That's what I thought," the judge had said disappointedly, which caused the Joker to snort and lean back in his chair. "Mr. Joker, do you understand the crimes in which you have been charged with?" he asked the man who sat behind the defense's desk.

The Joker's tiny court-appointed lawyer was easily the smallest man in the room, with little facial hair and even less clinging to the top of his head. He stepped in to answer just as the Joker lifted his index finger and inhaled to speak. "Yes, Your Honor, he does."

"Wonderful." Leaning forward on the bench and propping himself up on his elbows, Judge Masters linked his hands and pressed both index fingers to his lips, obviously in a moment of thought. "Then what I'm going to suggest is fair for each party. Clearly, Mr. Wright needs time to get his act together for trial, and I'm of the opinion that the Joker has gone undiagnosed for too long now. Joker, because you have chosen not to divulge your real name to the court, and because you have not provided your lawyer or the court with any past medical documentation of mental illness I have no choice but to submit you for a mandatory psychological observation for a period not to exceed six months. In that time, the prosecution will develop its case and you will be diagnosed with whatever kind of psychosis it is that you have."

Now, the Joker wasn't frightened of a jail cell, but he wasn't a huge fan of someone poking around the inner recesses of his mind. He supposed that it beat being sent to prison. He might have been able to fend off Batman, but he stood less of a chance locked up with fifty guys who had nothing better to do all day but work out.

"Your Honor, throwing him into a facility along with truly insane criminals is a death sentence for anyone who is there to genuinely seek treatment!" Carleton Wright thought he could hear the Joker smack his lips in contemplation from half way across the room. He was determined to get that man into the general populace at Blackgate, to prove to everyone - citizens and criminals alike - that he wasn't screwing around.

Much to the Joker's surprise, his short, pudgy lawyer actually did his job and came to his defense. "Might I remind the prosecution that my client is on trial for 737 counts of attempted murder. Ffffour-hundred-and-sssixty-two of which were incarcerated criminals. Of those 462, three-hundred-and-eighty-fff...five were remanded to Blackgate after the fiasco. If M-mah, mehma, Mr. Wright has any intention of remanding my client to Blackgate, then I expect that he would also be dropping at least 385 charges of attempted murder, since he seems so confident that no bodily harm will come to him should he be housed there until his trial. Neh, n-not to mention the fact that there's clearly his psychosis to be considered here." Gesturing to the Joker, who was looking up at him with a surprised glance, the lawyer turned back to the judge and shrugged his heavy shoulders.

He might have stuttered through his entire argument, but it was a damn fine one. So much so that the Joker found himself applauding with restrained hands. "Yeah, I like that," he mumbled, leaning over the table toward the judge. "Let's go with that."

Judge Masters gave the Joker a sharp glance before he turned back to Wright. "I know that you're doing what you feel to be right," he said, "but the fact of the matter still remains that you will not convince a jury that this man was sane during the time his crimes took place. I know this because he's not even committing a crime now, and _I'm_ having a very hard time believing he may be sane." Masters gave a large sigh. "I'm remanding him to continue his stay at Arkham Asylum for a six month period. After which, I will have doctors testify to myself and a tribunal about his mental state. Until then..." As Masters banged his gavel, ADA Wright felt the crushing blow of defeat. "This court is adjourned."

As a bailiff unshackled the Joker from the table with six other guards behind him, his dark eyes swept to the side and peered over at Carleton Wright. The two made eye contact for a moment. As soon as that black stare caught him, Wright hung his head and turned to exit the courtroom.

Commissioner Gordon had been right, not only had he underestimated the Joker, he had underestimated justice itself. He'd wanted the Joker in Blackgate, but how was it possible to collect enough evidence to prove that the Joker had committed all the murders himself, let alone was sane at the time? Wright had no choice but to let the observational period elapse, and in that time turn up enough evidence for at least one solid conviction. It might not have been enough for the death penalty, but it would have been enough to put him away for the rest of his life.

Defeated, and feeling several inches smaller than Harvey Dent had been, he was nearly out of the courtroom when he heard the Joker call out to him. "Hey, suit!"

Spinning around quickly, Carleton watched as he was being escorted out the back of the courtroom by five armed guards and a couple of orderlies brought in from Arkham Asylum especially for his arraignment. "If you can't lock your fears away, what _can_you lock up?" his squeaky voice had said, followed by a low chuckle.

The Joker's eyes had not slipped from him for a moment, and before he could be pulled into the back corridors of the courthouse, he flashed Wright a menacing yellow smile. The young attorney didn't move, he left every muscle seize before the Joker was pulled through the door and was gone.


	4. Chapter 4: Hero?

After Alfred had pushed open the door to deliver Master Bruce his morning tea, he first stopped, and took a moment to watch him. His form appeared only as a silhouette before ceiling-to-floor windows. He stood, his elbow resting against the divider that held the windows together, the hand of that same arm entangled in his dark hair. Bruce had been home, and although he stood in his sleeping attire, Alfred was sure that he hadn't slept. His thoughtful pose was deep in many things: contemplation, sadness, regret. It had been nearly three weeks since Batman's confrontation with the Joker, and there was a great deal to recover from. Far too much for one man, in Alfred's opinion, but he still didn't desire to mutter those four little words that Bruce hated so much.

'_I told you so.' _

Skulking away from the door, he meandered soundlessly through the halls and back toward the kitchen, where he leaned against the counter and busied himself reading the paper. He'd allow Master Bruce to set the pace of the morning, which he did only a few moments later when he emerged from his bedroom.

Alfred so hated it when he walked barefoot into the kitchen, but tried not to make mention of it as he came around the corner from the hallway and into the dark stone breakfast nook, filling with light from the rising sun. "Good morning, Master Bruce," he said in his usual chipper tone. Alfred folded the newspaper and fit it in between the sterling teapot and milk where it sat on the silver platter. "I trust you slept well."

Bruce raised his arms up over his head and stretched himself out, then slid onto a stool situated by the large granite-top island. "What would give you that impression, Alfred?" he asked, insinuating that sadly he did not. Bruce was always turning the screws to the old man, which made Alfred smile. He had been the same ever since he was a boy. Before he even acknowledged the scones and tea, Bruce plucked the morning newspaper from exactly where Alfred had placed it and flipped it to the front page.

Adorning the print was the details of the Joker's arraignment. Bruce Wayne evidently had no opinion, or at least tried to push it from his mind.

"Seems as though the Joker will be spending the next six months under heavy psychological observation." His comment was merely casual and came while Bruce was scanning over the article. Alfred placed a cup of tea on a saucer for him and with a gentle hand slid it across the stone counter, without so much as a squeal from the porcelain.

Despite the subject matter, Bruce appeared genuinely unenthusiastic. Shrugging his muscled shoulders and picking up the dainty teacup, he brought it to his lips and sipped, never taking his eyes off the page. "Yeah, well, he needs it... but I can imagine that the rest of Gotham isn't very impressed with the verdict." His response was just as casual, if not more so than Alfred's prompt for conversation. Just as he opened his mouth to speak again, Bruce turned the page and paused in sudden apprehension, and Alfred wondered if he had turned the Joker over in his mind just as he had with the newspaper: out of sight, and out of mind.

"Master Bruce..." he muttered, looking at him from over his glasses. Perhaps it wasn't apprehension so much as it was good old-fashioned worry.

Still not removing his eyes from the paper, Bruce had moved onto a story about gang related activities fizzling out in Gotham's underworld, due to its sudden lack of leadership. "Alfred..." he said, closing the newspaper for only a moment, his thumb holding his place. "It's done... he's gone... and I don't want to think about it."

And while his face and his tone was rather solemn, Alfred's was soft. His concern for the young man was like that of a father's for his son. His battle with the Joker had left him bloodied and raw in more than one sense. The wound was still fresh, and showed no signs of healing anytime soon.

Lifting his hands momentarily and releasing the ghost of the conversation, Alfred decided not to risk ruining Master Bruce's morning over a headline. Certainly the two of them had seen enough of them over the last couple of months:

**"Assistant District Attorney Caught in Police Cross-Fire with the Joker. Pronounced Dead."**

**"Corrupt Police Force Inhibiting Joker Investigation"**

**"Commissioner Gordon: 'Batman is ****NOT** **a hero'."**

Alfred knew that Bruce would never say as much, but he also knew that each such article broke his heart. To give up everything and to get nothing back was one of life's great tragedies, and even for a man like Bruce, who seemed to have everything, it was a tragedy in which he was all too well-versed. Every day he received more validation of it right there in the newspaper. Alfred had tried removing it from his morning routine, but there was no separating him from it. As much as he already knew what everyone thought of Batman, it was as if Bruce either wanted to torture himself further, or to see if perhaps the times had changed. If Alfred didn't provide him with one, he simply purchased one on his morning jog and read it in the living room before driving to work.

Whatever his reason for such focus on the morning paper, no matter how much anguish it brought him, in the pit of his stomach Alfred knew that Bruce had done this to himself, and although his cause was noble... his misery was proving harder to bear than he had expected.

His mind couldn't dote on it any longer. "Plans today, Master Bruce?" he asked as he usually did every morning. He took the liberty to memorize Bruce's schedule for every day of the week and reminded him of the things he had forgotten.

"Yeeeeah...." Bruce said, long and drawn out as he had trouble pulling his eyes away from a particular article. When next he looked up to Alfred, his eyes fluttered over to the clock on the wall.

"I have a meeting at 10 a.m., at the tower, and then you and I are heading out to the Palisades."

While wiping a damp cloth over the counter-top, Alfred paused and looked down to Bruce, who wore a cunning smile as he finished the last of his tea. "The Palisades? I wasn't aware that you had any business there today." Indeed, it had caught him off guard that he had seemed to have cleared his schedule for something - along with the fact that Bruce appeared to have included _him _on such an expedition.

Bruce's smile warmed considerably upon telling Alfred his exciting news. "Turns out they've finished the foundation of the new Manor. You and I are going to take a look for ourselves before they start their buildup operation."

It _was _something to be excited about, and Alfred knew the importance of it. Master Bruce had hired a private firm to construct a new foundation to the manor that stretched all the way down to the caves. His excuse, of course, was that he was a "spelunking enthusiast" and the company had bought into it, helping him design an incredibly elaborate maze of rooms, dens, and storage that would help him create the perfect environment for Batman's activities.

Alfred was happy that there was work being accomplished on the manor. He wasn't a fan of heights and living on the top floor of one of Gotham's taller residential buildings, he had made it clear that he was looking forward to living back on the ground; not to mention back in the countryside away from the city. For the moment, however, he was more pleased to see Bruce in better spirits.

"You'll come, won't you Alfred?" Bruce asked the old man, and once he had smiled and nodded it seemed to be all the persuasion that was needed to push him up off the chair and get ready for his morning jog. "Good! And hey..." He pointed at him with a jokingly accusative finger. "Don't be late." He then disappeared back into the hallway, making for his bedroom.

"Not for all the world, Master Bruce."

Defeated, Harley scribbled in a file and performed a balancing act. She sauntered slightly to the side in an attempt to regain her equilibrium as she completed a note about the patient she had just seen. Resting her file on her left forearm, she scribbled with her right hand, holding a paper coffee cup in the nook of her right elbow while clenching a bundle of wrinkled paperwork in her teeth.

She was fresh from a session with one of the men in the non-violent unit and had spent the better part of an hour arguing with him to sign a form. His elderly aunt, who had been acting as his medical proxy, had recently passed away and he was required to either release his proxy to the state, or assign another guardian to his case… but arguing with someone with a severely diminished sense of reason didn't reap a lot of rewards. Harley was used to the mind games and the nonsensical talk, but what she wasn't used to was chasing patients around in an attempt to physically control them… that was an orderly's job.

The frustrating bit was that she was constantly having to do work she was not cut out for. Most of the orderlies were assisting with moving the Joker from interview room to interview room, as therapists tried desperately to reach him, so far to no avail… or so Harley had heard, and secretly hoped. Things appeared to have finally quieted down. It had been three weeks since the Joker was admitted to Arkham for psychiatric observation, and the glamor of housing a world-famous criminal had faded, but hadn't quite worn off.

So the psychiatrists kept coming.

From all over North America they flooded in. Some of the best minds in the world, leaders in psychiatric science. Yet so far, all Harley had heard was that not one of them had made a dent. But hey, they could at least add it to their resume.

It disgusted her. The glitz was comparable to glitter-paint clinging to a rape victim. It might have been pretty, but what was it worth? She watched the pomp and circumstance as they walked down the hall in front of her office. She watched as Jeremiah Arkham did his song and dance for them. None of them had real sympathy, only credentials to say that they did. It was nauseating.

As she came around the corner and back toward her office she saw, much to her dismay, the very source of her nausea. At the door of her office Dr. Arkham stood, clipboard in hand, shit-eating grin on his face. She hated that grin. It pulled his dry skin as tight as a drum and added to the multitude of wrinkles underneath his eyes.

"It's that time again!" he called out, almost too chipper.

When Harley had first arrived she began once-a-week meetings with the doctor, which had then diminished to once-a-month. She hoped that one day they would disappear altogether. He said they would help her "improve her psychiatric method", coaching her as if his was superior compared to hers. Instead they were his little excuses to berate her for her sympathy toward her patients.

"Dr. Arkham," she said in relative monotone as she stepped around him to carefully unlock her office door.

"My, you certainly do have an armful there," he chimed, glancing over his glasses to the armyof items she juggled in her arms. She did her best to conceal a dry heave at his feigned concern. Only Arkham could be so convincing at being unconvincing.

_Thanks for the help, asshole_, she thought to herself as she held the door open with her back.

He slithered into her office like a snake and made himself at home, sitting in the guest's chair while she and all the items she had been carrying collapsed into her office chair. As she carefully moved the bundle onto her desk, she quietly mused about her secret excitement to see him. Certainly she didn't find his presence charming, but she knew very well that Arkham loved to talk. If she was going to slake her curiosity about the Joker, now would be the time.

"I'm relieved. I didn't think that you'd have time to see me, seeing as you've been so busy with the Joker recently." Luckily for Harley, she was a much better actor than Arkham could ever hope to be, but as convincing as he was, he didn't seem to take the bait.

"Never too busy to see you my dear," he said as he idly flipped through one of the old case-files that seemed to turn her somewhat sizable office into a cubbyhole.

_Damn, _Harley thought to herself, shifting her weight in the squeaky chair. "Good... I'm glad," she muttered through clenched teeth and crossed her legs, preparing to shut up and let the old man talk. She had become used to these sessions, and was all but silent in them, seeing as he rarely let her get a word in edgewise.

"Let's talk about you. I haven't spoken to you in a couple of weeks, and I notice that you're taking on a significant load of work." Dr. Arkham had a way of speaking that made it sound as if he _might _have been impressed, had he thought that the person was capable. The way he spoke to Harley was no exception. He had been watching her carefully since she had come through the doors of Arkham Asylum. So far she had not said or done anything that had impressed him. She hated the fact that his pleasure was a prerequisite to her success here.

However, when it came to the size of her case load, she didn't have much of a choice. "Unfortunately sir, I haven't had the luxury of being able to slow down," she told him outright. Harley's days were filled with dealing with patients who were affectionately referred to as the 'Lifies': people who were destined to spend the rest of their lives contained in one of the facility's many padded cells. "You have nearly every pension psychiatrist working day and night on the Joker's case. I'm picking up the slack so that the other patients don't suffer from neglected case files."

Having the blame placed back on him was not something that Arkham appreciated. In fact, after she was finished speaking he took his circular glasses out from the breast pocket of his lab coat and fitted them over his ears. "Certainly you don't find that I'm incapable of running my own facility, do you, Dr. Quinzel?" he asked her, though it sounded more like a statement than a question.

_Yeah, capable of running it right into the ground..._ Harley thought to herself, but she shook her head, hoping to keeping his frustration to a minimum. "No, but I acknowledge the fact that the Joker requires a lot of time. I'm just making sure the _other _patients don't get left behind in their therapy."

It was true, in a sense. Many other patients in basic care had gone without therapy for weeks, and they were used to one, sometimes two sessions daily. Most of the time Harley was just providing them with someone to talk to. Even some patients she had spoken to outside of basic care hadn't had therapy for nearly a week. They were left to rot like animals in an abandoned circus.

"These patients are not under your care. Some of them have been speaking with the same therapist for nearly a decade." He took one of the files off her desk. Harley had reached out to stop him from taking it, but he shot her a venomous look that dared her to restrain him. "Exposing them to a new doctor, a new presence, a new tone of voice can send a patient back in his therapy by years!" he exclaimed, but Harley didn't fall for his pathetic attempt to appear concerned. "Take 'Devil-Eyed Jones' here for example..."

"You mean Jeffrey Jones," she corrected him. The older gentleman had received a reputation for his orange, fire-colored eyes and his short fuse. He was closer to fifty, and had been a resident of Arkham Asylum since the age of 23, when he had begun poisoning neighborhood dogs with cyanide. He'd been using products from his pest control services to kill and, as was later discovered, he was spraying the sidewalks around his home. Thirty-two children in the area had to be treated for moderate cyanide poisoning. Along with his civilian reputation, Jones was known around Arkham for being uncontrollable. He had once stubbed his toe on one of the legs of his bed and screamed so loud he kept his entire floor awake... all night.

When Harley corrected him, Arkham shot her another steely look, but she didn't care. "Yes, well... _Jeffrey_ Jones has been bald-faced lying to you over the past week of therapy that you've had with him. Your notes here say that he's been speaking to you at length about his mother. Is that correct?" He asked the question with a tone that insinuated a point he wouldn't be stopped from making.

"Yes, that's correct."

"You do realize that Jeffrey's mother _died _during child-birth, and he was raised by his pedophilic maternal grandfather?"

For him to assume that he hadn't read the case-file before approaching the patient was beyond insulting. _How dare you..._ was all Harley could think, and she had trouble keeping the overwhelming sense of disgust from her face.

"I've read the file, Dr. Arkham," she told him rather sharply - sharp enough that Arkham looked over his round glasses at her. "I was aware of the fact that Jeffrey's mother was dead. I wasn't interested in the truth as we know it. I was interested in the truth as _he_ knew it. There's a difference." During her quarter in Therapy 301, a professor had put to the class that assuming your patient would not lie to you was like expecting that a lion wouldn't attack you. It was foolish, a sign of a tactless and naïve therapist.

"Instead," the professor had explained, "_expect _that your patient will lie to you. Anticipate it. When they do, you will be better prepared to read between the lines of their psychosis, and treat the patient based on the source buried deep beneath the bedrock of their emotional and mental issues."

"Then might I ask," the old doctor said, leaning in to look at her with a kind of abrasive curiosity, "that if you were able to discern the lie, why did you push the subject to speak at length over four sessions about a mother that never existed?" Arkham shook his head. Harley had to admit, the theory of allowing the patient to lie and then using psychiatric tact to decipher that lie was something of a new method. Arkham's school of thought, by contrast, was all about getting the patient to admit to the truth and confront it. Such a practice could be overly traumatizing to unstable patients. Using the patient's lies to form the truth was much more effective and less obtrusive, in Harley's experience. The patient came to the truth on their own terms, and it was a much easier pill to swallow.

Smiling courteously and bowing her head ever so slightly, Harley removed her rectangular glasses and gazed at Doctor Arkham in such a way that it would appear as though he had asked her _exactly_ the question she wanted him to ask.

"My father used to tell me that there's a little bit of truth in every lie." Inhaling deeply through her nose she shrugged a delicate shoulder. "And if you were to read on further in my notes, you'd see that the conversation that transpired was that Jeffrey's pain over losing his mother at such a young age was never confronted. He kept mentioning that his mother was a strong woman. My deduction was that Jeffrey feels remorse over never having known his mother. He kept on insisting that the mother that never existed was strong... it's clear to me that Jeffrey was looking for the maternal protection he never got from her in his youth… due to the fact that she was, indeed, deceased."

As she spoke, Jeremiah Arkham looked on in a state of mild shock. It was clear to her that he had not expected her to draw such a conclusion. After she had finished speaking, she gave him a proud smile. There was a warm feeling of accomplishment that spread from the center from her chest and outward like the ripples on a pond. "It's all standard Freud, wouldn't you say? Jeffrey's lie ended up speaking the truth. He needed to acknowledge that the lie was just another way his subconsciousness was trying to comfort him after the atrocities that happened to him as a boy." Pausing, she smiled and nodded assuredly. "He cried for a long time, but I think he's feeling better now."

He studied her expression for a moment. Afterward, he slid his glasses back into his breast pocket, rising from the folding chair. "You really believe all that? You believe you can use a lie to tell the truth?" he asked her, genuinely waiting to hear her response.

She stood along with him, nodding once more. "Yes, sir, I do."

Something in his hair face softened, and his brows peaked on his large forehead. "Very well, Dr. Quinzel," he said, and handed Jeffrey's file back to her. "Carry on." And with a sharp nod of his head, he turned and left the room.


	5. Chapter 5: Lies

In an aluminum chair at an aluminum table, the Joker sat in a white canvas jumpsuit; standard issue for most of the inmates at Arkham. It was thick and uncomfortable, and it provoked those who were considerably more insane than the Joker to strip from dislike of the garment. He was satisfied, and due to his peculiar sense of style when he was a free man, wearing something a little outdated suited him just fine. That didn't stop him from making jokes about it.

He constantly made mention of the ties or the suits that each therapist wore. In response they started asking him questions about why he appreciated their clothing so much. Seemed like everything he said just had to be followed by a question, every simple gesture he made was heavily scrutinized and studied, every question he asked was suspicious, and all of it was scribbled down into a case-file. When he would give up and stop talking he was dubbed uncooperative and the therapist left. The Joker didn't think it was so hard to figure out, he just liked the tie... and in essence, missed his own.

This happened time and time again. Sometimes he spoke, sometimes he asked questions, sometimes he was quiet. It would be fair to say that after four weeks of face after face, the Joker was refusing to speak the majority of the time. And the longer he was silent, the more Arkham began to sweat.

There was a moment during his therapy that Jeremiah Arkham nearly did a small dance to proclaim his happiness. When prompted about his mother, the Joker had spun a harrowing tale about a Jewish woman who had immigrated to Gotham as a young girl during World War II. For nearly half an hour the man had gone on and on about this mysterious woman.

The therapist within the interrogation room, along with Dr. Arkham in outside observation, were captivated by the story he told. His tone was passionate, legitimate, and sane. Details weren't over the top, nor was it too vague. Both doctors were feverishly taking notes until...

Arkham couldn't figure out if it was purposeful, and perhaps he would never know. The Joker's small mistake cost him the whole charade. "So one Sunday, my mother was pulling me up the stairs of our Church and this _insane_ homeless man comes out of nowhere..." he'd said, his hands moving wildly over his head as if to depict the madness of the character. Indeed, that was all it was, a character in the Joker's play.

"Wait..." As soon as the doctor stopped him, a menacing smile spread across the Joker's face. "If it was Sunday then..."

" Had you going for a moment there, didn't I?" The Joker knew, the therapist knew and Dr. Arkham knew: if the Joker's mother was Jewish, she would have been taking him to _synagogue_ Saturday, not church on Sunday.

In the observation room Dr. Arkham threw his clipboard against the wall with such ferocity that the metal clip at the top shattered away from the vainer panel, sending his notes scattering across the floor. Bending over and grabbing whatever hair that he had left on his head, he fought the urge to scream in frustration. Stomping his feet like a child, however, was still an option.

After the therapist had exited the interrogation room, he didn't seem deterred by the Joker's fabrication. He was, however, short with Dr. Arkham for wasting his time to treat a patient he clearly knew so little about. "Arkham, if you want so badly for someone to reach your patient, then you might want to think about first understanding his psychosis on an elementary level."

But that was already a week ago, and the Joker hadn't said much since.

Indeed, Arkham decided this patient was a waste of time. Doctor after doctor had come in to meet with him, and each one of them left empty-handed. None of them could distinguish the truth from the lies... that is, whenever the Joker actually decided to talk.

It had been a month since he had been submitted to Arkham for observation, and so far they didn't have any sort of information that they could use to prove the Joker's insanity. Having the Joker at the asylum was a potential cash cow for Arkham. He knew that donations would be at an all-time high if people (politicians, especially) felt safer due to his work. But if he couldn't convince a judge that the Joker was insane... he'd lose out on a lot of potential funding, not to mention a lot of respect from the psychiatric community.

Today, Dr. Arkham didn't even write down the name of the therapist that was interviewing him - he simply wrote down a number: "45". Somehow, _amazingly,_ the Joker had burned through forty-five therapists since he had come to Arkham thirty days ago. Once, sometimes twice a day, he would laugh in their faces; that terrifying, squealing laugher that made Arkham either want to rip his hair out, or settle into a corner and cry. _He needed this_... and the Joker could tell.

The Joker had been sitting in the room for an hour now, facing a one-sided mirror. Arkham looked back at him, and though unseen by the Joker, he felt as though those sharp black eyes of his were burning a hole straight to the back of his skull. He sat sunken down in the chair, hands folded, knees spread, forearms resting upon his thighs. Everything about the Joker's posture and positioning screamed detachment from the attempted conversation that was happening in front of him. When he wasn't playing with the doctors, he was one of the most aloof patients Arkham had ever observed. He reminded Arkham of a house cat; torturing some poor mouse for a time before losing interest and leaving the tiny creature shaken, but generally unscathed.

With the palms of his hands resting along the banister of the one-sided mirror, Arkham sighed heavily in exasperation. "What am I going to do?"

Observing with him that day was his esteemed colleague, Dr. Moritz Kleinburg. He had been a psychiatrist for nearly forty years, but was one of those rare souls who never let his cases get to him. He went home every day at six o'clock, slept in bed with his wife every night, and didn't look a day over fifty. In fact he still had a mane of black hair, with a distinguished shock of white that framed his handsome face. Arkham hated him, but he was a good psychiatrist. He'd already had his run with the Joker, which proved to be uneventful when the Joker had admitted that he was just going to spend his time lying to him like he had to everyone else. Dr. Kleinburg had gracefully left the room and with a gentle smile on his face had said to Arkham: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

Now the two men stood in the observation room watching the Joker clam up once more to a particularly unenthusiastic therapist.

"What is your name?" he'd asked the mangy-looking psychopath, with a deliberate tone of voice that suggested maybe the Joker didn't speak English.

The skin of the Joker's forehead creased as he lifted his brows. As if their line of questioning wasn't bad enough, now they had to make it sound like he didn't even know the language. Leaning over slightly and bringing a loosely clenched fist up to his mouth as he cleared his throat, he asked "_Primero, díme como te llamas tú?_" in the kind of Spanish a tourist would use away on holiday at one of those clichéd, overpriced resorts.

Throwing his arms up in the air in frustration, Arkham watched as the Joker chuckled gently to himself in the chair and then crossed his arms over his chest, looking off to the side and into no where. The therapist who sat across from him turned in his chair and gave an exaggerated shrug, as if to communicate that he was just as confused as Arkham was. The only one out of the three of them that had any sort of composure was Dr. Kleinburg. He peered through the one-way mirror with his eyes trained like a hyper-powered laser right onto the Joker's face.

"Did you hear what he just said?" Kleinburg asked in a concerned tone, but didn't take his eyes off the patient for an instant.

Sighing heavily once again, Arkham hung his head, defeated. It wasn't that the Joker had to make a fool out of him, but now he could do it in another language as well. "Great, he's bilingual. Well, on the plus side, maybe this opens us up to therapists from the Spanish community, hmm?" Heavy-hearted, with a look on his face that expressed genuine exhaustion, he turned on his heels to leave the room.

Hurriedly, Dr. Kleinburg swung around and grabbed Arkham's thinning bicep with the kind of grip that would have made his knees buckle - if he wasn't so busy being jealous of his colleague's vitality. "No, he said, '_First, why don't you tell me your name?_'" There was a pause and a moment of recognition as Arkham turned his head to peer back into the interrogation room. "He's _looking_ for someone to communicate with... otherwise he wouldn't have asked." Rolling his eyes as he turned to look back at the Joker, Kleinburg took on the same defeated expression as his colleague. "With these questions and these faceless doctors... it really is no wonder why he hasn't spoken to us – he _needs_ someone that can communicate on the same level as him," the distinguished doctor explained, and than cracked the door open a little to notify the other therapist to exit the room. "Someone..." he hesitated, as if searching that data bank for a mind of his for the appropriate word, "honest."

"Why don't you get back in there? Having an _honest_ conversation with him might help." Arkham proposed, but Kleinburg just shook his head.

"We've spoken, and he's made up his mind. He doesn't trust me. Otherwise, he would have continued talking to me when he had the chance."

The two men stood in silence, both with a hand to their mouths, entranced in thought. When the therapist who had been speaking to the Joker came out of the room and shut the door behind him, he looked at the two doctors and felt severely left out of the loop. He was a short, pudgy, balding man with thick glasses and a lab coat that was about two sizes too small for him. He pushed his glasses up on his face and put on a smile that could only be used to further communicate his confusion. "What's going on?" he asked, but no answer came for him.

"What's the point in having an honest conversation with someone who's just going to lie to you anyway?" Arkham asked idly, not actually expecting an answer. What tricks did he have left? Would the Joker respond to any of them? Were they all underestimating the man? Was it really impossible to believe that maybe, just maybe, the Joker was smarter than all of them?

With the same gentle smile as he had worn before, Dr. Kleinburg placed his hand on the banister of the window and looked at the Joker. "I suppose sometimes it doesn't matter what's said, but what you can _decipher_ from what's said. That's supposed to be our job, isn't it?"

But before he could turn back to gauge Arkham's response, the old doctor was running out the door and down the hall toward the elevator.

Harley gasped and stood up from her chair when Arkham burst into her office. As he panted at her door for a moment, leaning heavily on the brushed nickel doorknob, he lifted his free hand and gestured to her to hold on a moment while he caught his breath.

A wave of panic lapsed over her. What on Earth would push Arkham to the point of such frenzy that he felt the need to run down the hall and into her office? "What's happened?" she asked him with large, frightened eyes, rushing to his side.

Arkham's breathing was still labored as he spoke to her in-between hurried breaths. Taking her shoulders and gripping them tightly, Harley realized that even though she wanted them to, her eyes simply couldn't appear any more surprised. With those large blue orbs glistening up at him, he asked, "Did you really mean everything you said last week, _really_ really?" He took another breath. "About deciphering lies to tell the truth?"

He had asked her the same thing before he had left the room after their last monthly meeting, and she had agreed then - so why was he asking her again when he already knew the answer? "I told you then that I did. It's the same process that I used on Jeffrey Jones. You _know_ that... it was the whole reason you pulled me into a meeting." She shook her head, visibly confused. "Arkham, what the hell _happened_?" she asked, in a tone more demanding of an urgent answer.

He didn't reply as he pulled the young girl out the door and down the hall the way he had come. Harley locked her knees and dug her heels into the floor as much as she could to slow him down, but her flat leather shoes did not provide much grip and Arkham ended up dragging her behind him. "Wait! Arkham, wait!" she called out to him, but he didn't appear to be listening anymore.

Finally she managed to rip her arm out of his grasp. The two of them were causing a bit of a scene, as other orderlies and nurses had stopped to look on. "Just wait a moment, would you?!" she hollered at him. Her hair that had been tightly drawn up into a bun had unraveled slightly in their scuffle. Taking a moment to straighten herself, she gave Arkham a look like _he_ was the one going crazy. "I'll be happy to follow you, Dr. Arkham, but can you please _tell_ me what's going on first?"

Arkham turned back to her and settled down. The flush on his cheeks subsided, and for what must have been the first time in minutes, he caught his breath. "Just, come with me... I can't..." Looking around, he noticed that although some of them appeared to be turning away, some of the people in the nurses' station at the hall's end were still engaged in what was happening. "I can't speak about it in the middle of the hall..."

Nodding to him shortly, Harley promised to comply. The two of them stepped into the elevator with a couple of orderlies and exited on the seventh floor, the top floor. As the elevator doors slid open there was a cold chill that slid down Harley's back. This was where they kept some of Gotham's most notorious serial killers - insane men who were so depraved, so hungry for blood that the majority of them could no longer be treated, for fear that they would kill their therapist. Indeed, five years ago, one of these madmen had done exactly that...ripped out his therapist's jugular with his own teeth. No one came up here except for seasoned psychiatrists and only the most experienced of orderlies... so it was safe to say that Harley had never been.

Arkham led her to a door, but stopped just outside it. He took a very deep breath before turning back to her. "My dear," he began, almost affectionately. The very implication of receiving affection from Dr. Arkham made her ill. He pointed at her with a skeletal finger and continued. "You must never tell anyone that you were here unless I say you can." And without even waiting for an affirmative answer, he pushed the door open and held it for her to come in.

It was dark inside, and would have been black but for a light emanating from a window within. Harley found a fairly standard observation room waiting for her as she came in - but what was waiting beyond the window made her freeze.

She'd heard the sound of the door click behind her as it closed. She'd seen Dr. Kleinburg, who she had met a couple times briefly. But once she'd seen who it was that sat in the brightly lit interrogation room, her muscles seized and threatened to give up on her altogether.

Harley had put this so far out of her mind that she had nearly forgotten all about it. She had come to terms with the fact that Arkham was never going to let her see the Joker, but here she was, and there he was. There was a split second of recognition. She remembered Molly mentioning something about the Joker giving them the runaround, she remembered the conversation with Arkham regarding her methods...finally something in her mind clicked, and everything fit together like the pieces of a puzzle.

She covered her gasp with her hands as she gazed at Arkham, her eyes wide once again. "You gotta be kidding me!" she snapped in a hushed tone.

"Arkham, _are_ you out of your mind? Harleen's an intern. She's hardly been in practice for six months and you want to pit her against the Joker?" Kleinburg asked, in a seldom used aggressive tone. He was usually such a calm man, but it was evident to him that Arkham wasn't thinking straight if he was so willing to put the girl in harm's way, simply to get a word out of the Joker.

"Harley has proven herself very apt at deciphering patient lies," Arkham said. "She's sympathetic and gentle enough to get through to some of the most deranged criminals-"

Kleinburg cut him off, and somewhere in her mind Harley found it troubling that 'the good doctor', as he was referred to, knew so much about her. "She works with NVOs. She's not cut out to speak to men like _him_. Therapists don't usually start working with violent criminals until at least ten years into tenure."

As the two doctors waged war on one another, the Joker stood up and walked over to the glass. She'd been carefully watching the doctors bicker back and forth, but when the Joker's shadow was cast over her she took a step back and gasped. Had the glass not been between them, she would have been close enough for him to reach out and grab her. With his hands cuffed, he raised both of them and tapped slightly on the glass to get someone's attention. "Hello..." his voice called out and he pressed his ear against the blackened glass, listening in carefully.

While the two of them now hollering back and forth, Harley turned away from them to watch him in fascination. The theatrical way he leaned into the glass with his hands cupped around his ear, the way his black eyes seemed to scour around, listening in to tidbits of the conversation - even how the scar on his face tipped up and twitched appeared like the whiskers of a cat picking up on its surroundings.

Standing right in front of the window she continued to look him over, and once the doctors had noticed this, they turned to watch. "Harley?" Doctor Kleinburg called out to her. "Are you alright, dear?" He was a caring man; Harley knew this... but she also knew that he was relatively detached from his work. Some doctors required this method in order to stay sane themselves. Harley believed that if you couldn't stand the heat, you should get out of the kitchen.

Quickly she took a deep breath, nodding to the two men. Where just a moment ago she had looked at Dr. Arkham with sheer terror in her eyes, her face was now collected, almost confident. "He really is a lot larger than I expected." In her flat shoes, Harley stood maybe five-foot-six-inches. She was by no means tall, but the Joker had at least half a foot on her, if not more, as the two of them stood on each side of the mirror from one another.

He was nowhere near as menacing looking without the makeup. In fact, had he not had the scar around his mouth, he would have liked like a man she'd met in college who'd come in from California. His sand-colored hair hung halfway down his neck, he had significant dark circles under his eyes from a prolonged lack of sleep, and his teeth were far from white, having gone without proper hygiene for some time. It was true, he wasn't the most attractive man on the planet, but the scar added more than it took away from his face. Even without talking he seemed to have charisma, and sucked everyone's attention in from every direction. He reminded Harley of the absolutely gorgeous but insecure girl at a party: sure, she's beautiful... but it was all over-compensating for something that she lacked.

Today was different. Today she felt nowhere near what she had felt a month ago when she'd first laid eyes on him. The past desire that she had to speak to him came rushing back, so much so that she was now clamoring to get in that room. The Joker had the gravitational pull of the sun: bright, and inescapable. Today... there didn't appear to be anything absolutely, core-shakingly terrifying about him.

"Harley?" Dr. Kleinburg called out to her again, and she inhaled sharply, as if someone had shaken her from sleep.

Turning to glance over to them almost drowsily, she nodded. "I don't usually scare easy, Dr. Arkham...but I think..." She trailed off for a moment and peered back at the Joker as he moved away from the mirror and back to his chair.

Allowing a loud, shrill laugh to escape him he shook his head in disapproval. "Ready whenever you are doc! Send in the clowns!" he chimed in a sing-song voice, and snorted his displeasure at being made to stay in one place for so long.

Harley just smiled meekly, her face alight from the beaming window. "I don't know if I can treat him, but I think I can at least convince him to talk."

With an enthusiastic grin, and finally a ray of hope for her future success, Arkham clapped his hands together in excitement. "Well then, my dear, he's all yours."

After a deep breath, Harley peered at him once more. The Joker sat, reclining in the chair, hands behind his head, legs stretched out, waiting for the next move on the side of the doctors. Shaking her head free of all self-conscious thoughts, she arched back her shoulders, lifted her chin and stared down the disenchanted, apathetic man, who sat waiting to be poked and prodded by another unenthusiastic doctor.

Nearly pouting, Kleinburg reached out to brush Harley's forearm with his fingertips. His sympathetic glance made her made her hand freeze on the handle of the door into the interrogation room. "You don't need to do this if you don't want to, Harleen."

On the outside, Harley conveyed the serenity of a Buddhist in the midst of meditation. On the inside, she was a hurricane. Nothing, including fear, was going to stop her from getting inside that room.

Her sardonic grin was the only answer the good doctor needed and before he could say another word, Harley threw open the door, peered into the room, and smiled. "Well, good morning!" she called out to the Joker, who for a moment sat stunned in his chair.

There was a wave of terror that overcame Dr. Moritz Kleinburg, but before he could react the door to the interrogation room slammed shut, and the click of the lock felt like a knife to his chest.


	6. Chapter 6: Worthy

**UPDATE: Sorry guys, I hate reposting chapters (seems so unfair!) but there's another thing I hate a lot… and that's typos. A couple people pointed one really big on out to me, and well… I had to correct it. I'm sorry about the repost, and I'm sorry if any of you got notification of a new chapter that doesn't exist. Chapter updates are every Sunday ^_^!**

_Hey Guys! Just a short note from the author here. _

_First and foremost, you'll notice I've changed the name of the Fic. It's been changed to "Tragedy Deferred" Which is something that will have relevance down the line and comes from the quote by Pico Iyer "Comedy is nothing more but tragedy deferred." _

_Secondly, I just wanted to take the time to say thank you. I've never had such a response from an audience before in my life, and as part of such a huge and thoughtful fandom, I feel really privileged. But along with a thank you, I wanted to tell you that I've got a lot in store for my readers. _

_Just this week I sat down and wrote down short synopses for chapter 9 right through to the end of the first half, which should culminate at chapter 31. I did this to prove to you that I've never been so inspired to write, and I'm in this for the long haul. _

_I don't really share interests with a lot of my friends. It's not like I can go to a party and say "Hey guys! I'm working on this epic piece of fanfiction!" I imagine that I'd receive a lot of snide chuckles. I'm sure some of you can relate. _

_So, if you've been keeping up a hundred thank yous are coming in your direction. Your reviews/comments/emails keep me super focused and inspired to write more. _

_I have a cache of about 4 chapters, and as I write this I'm about to embark into chapter 11. Wish me luck. I know you're going to love chapter 6; it's where the story really begins to take off. Things are only going to get more turbulent and visceral as time wears on. _

_I've got some great ideas, so DO NOT be afraid to drop me a line, friend me on LJ, or chit-chat with me on AIM. All the information is in my profile. _

_That's all for now! Enjoy chapter 6. _

When she entered the room, the Joker had a look on his face like something had gone terribly awry. The way the door seemed to swing open with minimal effort, the way she seemed to float across the room and into the chair as if transported there by conveyor - it all seemed hopelessly wrong when compared to what he had seen over the last thirty days. She said good morning to him, but it all honesty, the Joker hadn't seen sunlight or breathed fresh air in about a month. With therapists walking in every day he was constantly aware of the date, but seldom knew the time.

"Oh, morning? Is that what time it is?" he cracked with an displeased look. It wasn't uncommon for one of these head-shrinkers to come in here and pretend to be his best friend. They thought if they played the 'chum' card that he might just end up venting his evil plans. They were just like everyone else. Always thinking that there was something deeper and darker going on then simply manic behavior. There was no plan...

Casually, she slid into place at the chair across from him and flipped open the top of his file, with such force that it would have scattered the sheets inside had they not been clipped into place. "Hmm?" Lifting her brows and looking up at him she took a moment to process what he said. "Yeah, I know...says here they have you in Cell 714. That's on the inside." Her eyes had trailed from his file and back up to his face. "No windows." Her pale pink lips curled around those two words, as if they were particularly poignant.

Tilting his chin up and narrowing his eyes he took a moment to drink her in. She was young, lithe... maybe even had something of a figure underneath the gray blazer and black trousers she wore. Her eyes were a slate gray color; they would have popped more if she had bothered to put on a spot of make-up. Her plain brown hair was tied back into a shabby bun, and she wore no jewelry at all. If he only had one word to describe her, it would have been 'boring', but if he had two words, the other would have been 'woman', and he was willing to give her the time of day based on that fact alone.

"What time is it anyway?" he asked, and then licked the corner of his mouth, pressing his lips together to spread the moisture. He hated this place. It was dry, barren, colorless. Staying here was like being caught in the desert.

He watched as she pulled the cuff of her white lab coat up over her left wrist and glanced down at an expensive silver watch. He admired it for a moment. He could see the dark second hand ticking silently across the face, a tiny diamond at twelve, three, six and nine o'clock. Feminine, but with a large face and thick silver link band. Expensive, sentimental, maybe a gift. "It's about eleven o'clock. Still technically morning," she explained, before pulling the cuff back down and glancing up at him.

Half-expecting her to write down little notes about questioning her about the time, he was caught quite off guard when she clicked her pen closed, placed it in the file, and folded the whole thing shut, moving it over on the table, clearly making it known that she didn't plan on using it. "It's nice though, hmm? No natural light means it won't be long before you have a natural white glow. You'll be back to your old scary self in no time."

Who _was_ this girl? Here she was, sitting across from him, chatting to him like she didn't have a care in the world. She was either fearless, or a very impressive actress. Regardless, he had to commend her recklessness. Most who'd sat down with him were so uptight he'd had to ask if they needed a drink before they got started. Not her though. She sauntered in like someone just off the street. It wasn't an impossible thought. He knew Arkham was getting desperate.

Watching her lean back in her chair, the Joker was drawn to the way she rested one arm on the table and her other on the backrest of the chair. She was silent... too silent for someone who was supposed to be asking questions. A few more seconds went by - she gave a bored sigh, crossed her legs, and began to inspect her fingernails. He rolled his eyes. He didn't want to play this game, but it wasn't like he'd just sit here and look at the woman for an hour, so he decided to make the most of it. Maybe he could have a little fun. "_Alright_...what's your name?" he asked, to break the ice.

She smiled, wide... and _boy_ what a smile. Okay, maybe the broad wasn't much to look at, but she had potential...and a great set of teeth. Two rows of ivory white chompers that suddenly made those plain pink lips a sharper shade of magenta.

She sized him up with her gaze for just a second longer, drumming her fingertips on the aluminum table. Then she spoke, nodding briefly as she did so. "I'm Dr. Harleen Quinzel." Lifting her eyebrows she turned her palm up, gesturing to him. "What's yours?"

Everyone who had come to speak with him had asked him the same question, but somehow when she asked, it sounded like she actually wanted to know. Though, he wasn't sure what she wanted to hear. From the look of her, she might just be content with what he'd been using all this time. "Well, that all depends." Glancing up and stretching out his neck, he brought his cuffed hands up to scratch behind his ear. "What name do you want to hear?"

"Preferably the name your mother gave you, but whatever you're comfortable with being called is just fine by me," she said with a shrug. The other doctors had asked for an honest answer to the point where they wouldn't acknowledge him until he had answered it. She really didn't seem to care.

"Well..." he started and then inspected his own fingernails for a moment, attempting to appear just as nonchalant. "What if my mother named me _Frankenstein_?" he asked, leaning up to the table and resting his elbows on the cool metal surface.

Mimicking his pose, the doctor leaned in herself, her forearms laid flat against the tabletop. "Well, then I'd say your mother gave you a pretty shitty name."

Having not expected such a response, he simply stared at her for a moment before his scars danced across his face, his pale lips stretched into a smile. Then finally, a laugh. Not one of his usual ear-splitting laughs, but a genuine one. _Heh... who knew, a doctor with a sense of humor!_ he thought and then leaned his back against the chair.

He took a breath and huffed it out. "I've had a lot of names...but you know what people call me." It was a joke. The way they came in here, sat down at the table, and asked him what his name was, as if they expected that he would tell the truth. But she didn't appear to be expecting that. "Joker...but, you know... people just don't seem to find me very funny."

And who could blame them? He was a threat. He'd been locked up with a lost key. He knew how badly they wanted to put him in a padded cell and forget about him, but they got an 'A' for effort anyway. At least they were trying to reach him, and sending her in was the smartest thing they'd done so far.

"So, what can I do for you, Dr. Quinzel?" the Joker asked in a shrill voice, nodding to the file that she had closed just a moment ago. "If you plan on taking notes on my life story, you don't seem very prepared."

It was true. He hadn't been expecting her to fold up his file and put it away - although there _were _probably doctors on the other side of the glass who were hurriedly scribbling down notes on her behalf. It was comforting to know that she wasn't worried about the details. He wasn't about to argue that she was trying too hard... since the majority of the shrinks he'd met with didn't try at all.

She scoffed with one eyebrow raised critically, but a sly grin pulled at the right side of her lips. "Yeah, like you plan on giving me your life story. I'm actually not here to psychoanalyze you. I'm here to give you a bit of friendly advice." Tilting her head one way and than the other, she gave him the impression that it was advice he should take heed of, although he hadn't experienced much of that friendly feeling since he'd walked through the door at Arkham.

"Friendly?"

"Yeah!" She nodded reassuringly, leaning into the chair with her arm draped casually over the back. "Friendly advice. That is..." She stretched her free hand out and splayed her fingers toward him. "Unless you don't want to hear it."

He narrowed his eyes, skeptical. He knew that had he had his 'face' on the glance would have appeared more intimidating. A month of duds, and then they pull this chick out of no where? Something smelled rotten, but he figured he might as well hear what she had to say. Silent, he lifted his cuffed hands ever so slightly, gesturing for her to continue.

"Well..." she began, "you're here for observation. The objective over the next five months is to have a therapist speak to you, and have a team of doctors work together to diagnose your various psychoses to release to the court."

The explanation was exactly what he had heard at the arraignment. Normally the Joker would have rolled his eyes, scoffed, and called her out for making him sound like an idiot... but the way she spoke, the tone of her voice, made him feel like she expected he already knew this, and was just reiterating a point. "Mmm.." he grunted, acknowledging his understanding.

She continued. "Now, if they, being the doctors, _can't_ produce a report on you, the court will have no choice but to find you sane and to try you for the murder of those you've killed."

It was clear to him that she had reached a conclusion on something long before he did. Being the kind of chaotic revolutionary that he was, the Joker knew his rights... and knew a thing or two about forensics. He was never sloppy enough to leave his DNA lying around, and knew that he had a right to confidential privileges and things of this nature. But when you got into the legal mumbo-jumbo of it all... that's what lawyers were for.

"Okay, so the only way the doctors aren't going to be able to produce that report is if you don't provide them with enough information to do so... which up until this point..." She shrugged her shoulders and twisted her mouth into a bit a frown. "You haven't."

Her argument was logical. The Joker liked that. It was nice to see that she was being direct with him, but there was something about her idea that nagged at him. "Well, that doesn't make sense. Clearly I'm out of my mind," he said very matter-of-factly. "Besides, don't the really crazy people clam up most of the time? Don't I have the right to remain silent?"

Now he was smug; sold on the fact that he had made a solid point - until a few seconds after looking at the skeptical visage that looked back at him. His confidence waned a little bit. "Mmm..." she groaned. "I'd say yes... except..."

"Except?"

"Well, maybe if you hadn't said one word for the last thirty days, but you _have _been speaking intermittently. Worse yet, you've been mocking the doctors who are trying to treat you, which exhibits at least a basic knowledge of your situation and a complete unwillingness to cooperate." Bringing her hand up to scratch her scalp idly, she huffed a heavy sigh. "Besides... when you get right down to it, the ADA on your case is going to try to convince the jury that your silence proves that you have something to hide." She lifted her left hand toward him. "Crazy people talk because they don't know the repercussions." Then she lifted her right. "Sane people shut the hell up because they _do_."

_Damn,_ the Joker thought to himself. She had a point. Had he just kept his big mouth shut, he might have been able to convince the judge of his lunacy... but now that he'd already started speaking, it was kind of difficult to backpedal.

"So..." His raspy voice was hardly above a whisper, as if ashamed to admit that he hadn't thought of her line of reasoning. "What do I do?"

Placing her palms face down on the tabletop, she looked him directly in the eye. "You've already started down this path; you might as well keep going. Clamming up now isn't going to do you any good, and allowing the court to distinguish whether or not you were mentally ill at the time of your crimes is your best bet." Tilting her head to the right and rubbing her cheek against her shoulder, she gave an exaggerated, not exactly sympathetic pout. "In the end, it's all up to you."

This psychology jargon was new to him, but he had long since figured out the trick behind it. Trained professionals would ask blatantly obvious questions and draw dramatic conclusions from them. The Joker could tell that it was not a job that just anyone could perform. It took an uncanny ability to read between the lines… which Dr. Quinzel had just proved that she was able to do. But hey, he was a smart guy. Talking was one thing. Talking and sharing important information was another; he was sure he could keep the shrinks happy, provide them a diagnosis and manage to avoid a potentially lethal stay at Blackgate without revealing too much.

Twisting his lips into a thoughtful pucker, she could clearly see that he was reasoning with himself. She was about to open her mouth to speak-

- when suddenly the Joker stretched out his hand and took a surprising gentle hold of her left wrist.

The young doctor had a look of dark surprise flash across her face, like that feeling you sometimes have of falling even when safe and sound in bed. She didn't shift or pull away, but the Joker could almost feel the electricity pulse through her muscles as they tightened and then relaxed just as quickly. He was sure that whoever was behind the one-sided mirror was just writhing in discomfort over the physical contact, but he merely peered through to the mirror and licked his lips before his eyes trailed back to her face.

"Alright…" he said quietly, his eyes flashing up the ceiling. "I'll talk." It was true, he appeared defeated for a moment, but he couldn't help but smile wearily at her excitement.

Her face seemed to light up; the smile returned, and her cheerful eyes even appeared to sparkle in the harsh, artificial white light of the room. "Wonderful!" she said, grabbing his file and sliding her hand out from under his as she stood, whisking her way back over to the door. "I'll get you a therapist!"

A look of confusion passed over his face as he slid his hands beneath the table, gazing at her out of the corner of his eyes. "What are you talking about?" he asked. It wasn't often that the Joker found himself this befuddled. She'd spent the last ten minutes friending him up, charming him, urging him to talk...and all of a sudden she was whisking herself away to find him someone devoid of a personality to talk to?

"No, no, no… I want to talk to _you_."

He watched her freeze as soon as she had put her hand to the door handle. She stared at the cold, gray, reinforced metal door so hard that those blue eyes of hers could have burned a hole right through it. Slowly, she turned around on the tips of her toes to look back at him. He sat there, looking perhaps a little too smug. The cynical look she gave him just now was a perfect mirror of the one he had given her just a few moments ago. "Why? Because I'm young and easy to manipulate?"

"No." His answer came almost immediately, a long and drawn-out syllable, as if he'd found her conclusion absurd and disrespectful. It was smart of her to assume, but even he was shocked as to how wrong she was. It wasn't like he was an introvert. The Joker usually had no problem talking to anyone. He did, however, have a problem making acquaintances. Some people respected him, and a lot of people feared him. So far the only people who he couldn't seem to intimidate had been Dent, Gordon, and… well…You-Know-Who.

But this girl - if she was frightened or intimidated, she was suppressing it. There was still the vague scent of self-consciousness on her, but she had pushed it down into the pit of her stomach. No one other than him would have been able to pick up on it.

The Joker had read in an article that some of the most successful people in the world were experts at forcing themselves into situations they found unpleasant. It was a kind of bravery, in a sense. When she had taken a couple steps back toward the table and pushed a finger tip into the aluminum to punctuate her question, she asked: "Then why? Because it doesn't make any sense to talk to me, when you could be talking to a seasoned psychiatrist who will be able to diagnose you more efficiently."

He gave her a pleasant smile. She knew just as well as he did that efficiencies and professionalism meant very little to him. "You've got charisma, a personality. I like that," he said, quite simply. He wasn't about to gush - she was still a psychiatrist after all - and if he had a choice he wouldn't be meeting with one at all… but if he had to choose, sure, he'd pick the young, malleable, clean-cut, potential piece of eye-candy doctor over the porky, balding, fifty-something poindexter. "_Smile and the world smiles with you_, you know?"

Oh! He could see it in her face, the way her brows dipped toward the center of her forehead. He'd struck a chord somewhere in there. Her face softened after a deep breath, and she tapped the table with her fingertips.

"Just… stay here for a minute, okay?" she asked him breathlessly. "I'll double check…"

She left the room. He listened to the door close behind her, and then strained to listen to conversation that was happening behind the glass. He could tell there were three people, their voices distinct. One made it clear that he was highly opposed to the idea. His voice was loud, adamant, and commanding. Afterward the Joker heard a softer voice - just mutters, really. The conversation bounced back and forth for a few minutes, both parties bickering, Dr. Quinzel seeming to have no part in their argument.

After another moment or so, there was a harsh remark, and the Joker could hear it as clear as a bell. "...Arkham, rest assured! You're going to regret this idea."

There was a pause, both parties falling silent, but a quiet squeal from a door's hinge could be heard. "Good luck, Harley," the voice said in a somewhat softer tone, before there came the sound of a door slamming shut.

There were a few more moments of silence, but before long, Dr. Quinzel was back in the room, a cool smile on her face. Gently closing the door behind her, his file still clasped in her hand, she turned to look over at him. The Joker did his best job looking like he wasn't paying attention. He stared off to the side, whistling idly, but when she slid into place across the table from him, his eyes shot back over to her.

She tilted her head, pressing her lips together in a delighted smirk. "Alright, but there are some stipulations," she explained, pointing at him to pronounce the importance of it.

"Such as?"

"Such as…our first few sessions are going to be closely supervised by Dr. Arkham. If, after that, he feels like we're making actual progress, he'll let me continue independently."

The Joker had spoken to this Dr. Arkham character a couple times since he'd been there. In fact, he was the doctor he'd spoken to his first night here. He didn't like the man. He was arrogant - not that the Joker had anything against arrogant people...unless that arrogance was directed toward him. He didn't enjoy the fact that he'd be observing, but if for even the first few sessions he could mind his '_P's and Q's, _so to speak, then maybe lurking around the asylum would be more fun than expected.

Dr. Quinzel went on. "The first sessions will include comprehensive personality tests. Things like Rorschach ink blots, picture arrangement tests, musical therapy…" The stuff he saw in the movies all the time. Things they did to typical crazy people, trying to bring back a flood of memories about an abusive childhood, an alcoholic father, a prostitute mother.

The great thing about being the Joker was there were hardly any memories to bring back.

His chin dipping toward his chest, he looked up at her with his sleepy, sable-colored eyes. "Trying to drum some of the usual patterns?" It was hard for him to remain anything other than skeptical. There were a lot of respectable scientists who passed this stuff off as pseudoscience. Attempting to understand the human mind was, in many ways, impossible.

Nevertheless, Dr. Quinzel's face was optimistic. "Oh, I think you'll find that modern psychology will surprise you. It's more multifaceted then the way it's portrayed in movies."

Well, at least she had confidence in her work, he could give her that. His look was still unenthusiastic when she stood up. She wore a meek smile, and somehow looked different now than when he had first laid eyes on her.

"So, when do we get this party started? I want to lay down on a big comfy chaise," he joked with her, watching as she cracked another smile.

She held his file to her chest almost protectively. The Joker knew he usually would have been contemplating which stories and lies he would tell her first - sometimes it took him a full night to nail down the details on one of his stories - but for some reason now, he wasn't thinking about those things.

"Tomorrow morning, at ten-thirty," she said. "You'll be escorted by a guard to a meeting room. I'll be waiting for you there." She turned to take the couple steps toward the door. Before she left, though, she turned back and reached out her hand. "Oh, and Joker?"

"Mm?" he grunted again, not entirely sure as to what she wanted. He looked from her hand to her face, which soon spread in a mischievous grin.

Pulling her fingers in toward her palm a couple times, she thrust her hand a few inches closer to him. "May I please have my watch back?" she asked quietly.

He hadn't thought she'd noticed - clearly he'd been wrong. When he had placed his hand over hers just a few minutes before she'd left the room, he'd managed to deftly pull it away from her delicate wrist. Having stashed it underneath the lip of the aluminum table, he retrieved it, glancing down at it for a moment before lifting both bound hands to give it back.

Several things about the girl had surprised him, though he would never let her know it. The way she seemed so nonchalant when she had walked into the same room with (essentially) a serial killer, how she managed to strike up a casual conversation with said serial killer, and how she was brazen enough to stand up to him - it all had him a little out of sorts. She had even been bold enough to ask for her watch back... but if he had taken it in anything other than good fun, he probably wouldn't have given it back.

The thing that shocked him, though: she really didn't appear very angry. In fact, her face expressed amusement more than anything else.

"I usually get away with things like that," the Joker told her, as she slid the watch back over her hand and turned back toward the door. He noticed she had a tendency to turn on a dime, rather than actually take a step. She kind of reminded him of a marine obeying orders from an invisible drill sergeant.

"Yeah, well..." She looked over her shoulder at him. "I don't plan on letting you get away with much, Joker."

"Oh ho!" He made a gun of his thumb and index finger, and clicked his teeth while pretending to pull the trigger. "Gonna keep me on a short leash, Dr. Quinzel?"

"You know it!" She opened the door and pushed into the dark observation room once more, where an impatient Arkham was waiting. "I'll see you tomorrow. And call me Harley."

The invitation proved to be too much, and the Joker chuckled at the strange feeling of camaraderie. For a moment, he rolled the name over in his mind and muttered it to himself quietly, as if just now realizing the significance behind it.

"Harley _Quin_zel... I like it," he whispered as the door shut behind her.


	7. Chapter 7: Foundations

Alfred had parked on the manor's country driveway, so as to avoid getting mud on Master Bruce's new Cadillac. The machine rolled up the rainy road silently and shifted gracefully into park. Professional, large-scale landscapers had been hired to privatize the driveway, and where there had once been a wide open space in front of the mansion, there was now a thriving pine forest being erected. Alfred had stopped the car just beyond the tree line, now in full view of the new manor's foundation. A slew of backhoes had dug their cleats into the dirt, allowing rain water to collect in the impressions that formed trails weaving through the property. Though most of the machinery was quiet, there were still a few denim-clad workers scaling the cement walls below.

Adjusting his cheauffeur's hat, he stepped out into the damp, rainy weather and looked over to where Bruce was standing up out of the back seat. Visually he didn't acknowledge Alfred, appearing entranced by the sight before him. He'd made it very clear that the foundation would be the most important part of the house, and would serve a more dynamic function then it had before. The manor was simply a façade for the cave - an extension of it, so to speak. In the brief time that the two of them had been there, Alfred had noticed that the depths below the mansion became as much a home to Bruce as the manor had been in his youth. Now the mansion was not so much as a home as a headquarters.

The day was colder than usual, and the old man had the pull his frock overcoat a little tighter around his bones. It was the chilly type of wet weather Gotham would get as it headed toward winter. Not quite cold enough to snow, but certainly cold enough to turn a rainy day into a miserable mess.

As the two of them came up to a small work tent not far from the edge of the foundation, a portly man in a hard hat emerged to meet them. He was pleased to see Bruce Wayne walking toward him. Given that Bruce recognized him at a glance, Alfred assumed that this was the site foreman. Bruce had vaguely described meeting him prior to the project's inception. "He's a good guy," he remembered Master Bruce telling him, "and just dimwitted enough not to ask any questions."

Certainly, that was the impression Alfred was getting from him now. The foreman took a couple hurried steps toward them. "Hello, Mr. Wayne." He had an old New York accent and was clearly of Italian descent. He had not personally had a hand in the design, and was simply part of the construction team, but it was clear from his enthusiasm that Master Bruce could have been building a perfect replica of Noah's Ark and he wouldn't have minded. Work was work, and that was something Bruce appreciated from blue-collared workers.

The foreman had stretched out his thick-fingered, unmanicured hand to shake Bruce's hand, which was free of most noticeable calluses. "Glad you could come down to take a look at the finished product before we start building up."

Bruce gave the offered hand a single, firm shake, and then stuffed his hands into his pockets, no doubt to cover them with the secret tiny bottles of hand sanitizer that Alfred knew he carried with him. "No problem." Bruce responded coolly. "I love seeing a plan in action." Perhaps he was downplaying - the serious look on his face certainly said so - but Alfred knew he was much more excited then he was letting on.

"Well, let's take a look-see, yeah?" The three of them stepped onto an extended scissor-lift which made a loud whirring sound as they made their way into what would eventually become the basement of the new Wayne Manor. Alfred had a sense of descending into a darker world. The foundation was deep, which was fairly standard for such large homes, but the collected rain water gave the new stony cement a mustiness that made the place that much drearier.

The scissor-lift halted to a stop and, led by the foreman, Bruce and Alfred made their way past puddles that had collected on the hardened floor. "Don't worry about this water," he said with a confident tone. "All this cement was set chemically. Now that it's hardened, a levee could break and you still won't experience any flooding."

Bruce did not appear too concerned. In fact, he didn't say a word. For nearly fifteen minutes the foreman spoke passionately, and at length about the type of construction techniques used: the reinforcement bars added to the walls that he had asked for, and plans for further customization for the efficient and organized storage of his _'spelunking'_ equipment. Alfred found himself wondering what the five-year-old Bruce Wayne's behavior would be right at this instant. He imagined that it would be comparable to dancing around in anxious longing, because he knew that what the young man was really waiting for was the designed entrance to the cave.

The foundation was designed as a kind of steeplechase; it was designed in steps, constantly moving downward. You couldn't notice it at first but as one came closer and closer to the North-West corner of the manor you were nearly 25 feet deeper underground than you had been in the South East corner. This corner was where the old well had been, and so it was built right into the manor's foundation for sake of convenience. And now as they came closer, Alfred could almost feel the electricity in that cold musty air, the sound of rushing water and the flutter of wings.

"Now, Mr. Wayne, for the time being we've kept the entrance open, on account of all the bats, but later on..." The foreman gestured toward the sculpted opening that led into pitch-black darkness. "You can speak to your designers about what kind of a door you want here."

Having the instinctive feeling that the foreman had been as thorough as was humanly possible, Alfred exchanged a look with Master Bruce, as if they had both agreed that the man's tour was coming to a close.

"Thanks Louis," Bruce said, in a tone expressing just a minuscule amount of appreciation, which was about as warm and friendly he was with people he didn't know well - which was to say nearly everyone. "I'm going to take a closer look around. Would you mind giving me a minute? I'll come get you when I'm done."

Alfred gave the man a polite if forced smile and a reassuring nod ,before the foreman nodded back to Bruce and climbed back toward the scissor-lift, hands in his pockets. They watched him leave and waited until the sound of his footsteps faded off considerably before they spoke in hushed tones.

"I know what you're going to say," Master Bruce said, cautiously stepping to the edge of the cement to gaze down into the blackness of the cave. It appeared to be a mere whisper of what it had been before the fire. Bruce had moved all of the essentials out of it himself during the cleanup, and had relocated them to the underground holding container by the docks which had served as their base of operations during the Joker debacle. Alfred never really thought that their improvised Batcave suited the persona of Batman very much, but they had to make do until the manor was up and running again.

With a clever smile, Alfred turned his ear away from the distant echoing footsteps of the departing foreman and gave his full auditory attention to the young man. Although he was engaged in the conversation, he still appeared distant as he glanced down into the dark. "Well then, I suppose I better not say anything at all, shouldn't I, Master Wayne?"

Bruce gave a bemused snort in his usual smug tone. His dark eyes seemed to pierce through the dense air and down into the gaping hole of his own solitude. Alfred kept himself on his toes; the young man looked as though he might plunge into the pit at any moment. There was a pause where the two of them fell silent. While the old man stood in careful, obedient watch of his young counterpart, he couldn't help but feel a sense of loneliness in the room, as if perhaps Master Bruce wasn't there at all.

"Just seems like a waste, doesn't it?" Bruce said at last, turning away from the entrance of the cave and stuffing his hands back into the pockets of his black tweed carcoat. He wore a look of displaced amusement, and Alfred didn't quite know what to make of it.

"What do you mean, Master Bruce?"

Almost immediately, Bruce continued, gesturing to the cave once again. "I mean, all this work done, all this money spent, and all this time, Jim Gordon's professing that Gotham doesn't need Batman." There was a longing in his voice, a self-inflicted depression. As he was saying it Alfred knew that the young man was letting his mind play tricks on him. Deceitful, dark tricks.

Alfred was a gentleman's gentleman, and it was a role that sometimes required confidence beyond his means. Very rarely did he ever let confusion rearrange the wrinkled features on his face. But, in order to convey his belief in the utter absurdity of his thought, Alfred allowed a frown to briefly crease his face. "But you did this, Sir. You instructed Commissioner Gordon to turn his back on Batman. You allowed Gotham to see you as the villain, and look what happened."

Bruce ran a hand through his dark brown hair before bringing it back to extend in an exasperated shrug. "I created a place that doesn't need Batman." There was another long, drawn-out pause filled with quiet fury, and regret, and loss. "I created the world that Rachel wanted to live in..."

It was the same hurt, the same strife that he'd been dealing with for weeks. That he would continue to deal with for the rest of his life. Alfred felt in his heart that Master Bruce had not reason to feel guilty, and yet he knew he would... just as anyone else would. It usually didn't take Alfred more than a few seconds to convey a message of inspiration to him, but he found his mind clamoring, hoping to give him any stepping stone he could so as to pull himself from this hole he was burying himself into. "I can't speak for Rachel...no one can. But you haven't given up, and neither have those who lurk below the surface," Alfred told him, and Bruce turned his attention back to the old man. "When I first started working for your father, he would always say: 'If I had a nickel for every...'"

"'...stray bullet in this city'," Bruce finished his sentence, and with his head tilted down ever so slightly, cracked the faintest of smiles.

Lifting his hand from his pocket to point toward him, Alfred nodded. "That was thirty years ago, and ever since then, Gotham has been begging for the hero it needed." Widening his light colored eyes to the point where the wrinkles around them smoothed out, he used that same finger to point back toward himself. "I don't need to remind you of exactly what kind of a man Batman is."

Bruce knew. Any other day, he wouldn't need to be reminded, but when he looked up to his good friend with a look of intentional forgetfulness, Alfred's gentle smile spread, and then reached over to pat him on the back. "Batman is alone, but Bruce Wayne? Bruce Wayne will never be alone," he said, in the kind of tone that made Bruce tear his eyes away from the entrance to the cave. Nodding back toward the way they'd come, Alfred winked at him. "I'm sure next time we're here, Mr. Fox will bring along with him that head full of ideas for your _spelunking_ equipment, now won't he?"

"I'm hoping so, I don't know what to do with the damned stuff," young Master Wayne said, as the two of them turned and moved back toward the scissor-lift that waited patiently to bring them back to the surface.

One foot in front of the other.

Take a breath.

One foot in front of the other.

When the narrow doors of the elevator opened, Harley's blue eyes seemed to follow them as they disappeared into the wall, before sleepily turning to the hall before her. Instead of a simple trip back to the surface level, she felt as though she had suddenly been stirred from some deep coma: her stomach was hollow, her lips were parched, and her mind lumbered restlessly from thought to thought like a zombie in an old horror movie. Zombie was an adequate description. She felt, and she was sure looked very much like one.

Her unblinking eyes seemed to look off into nowhere as she slowly made her way back toward her office. What encapsulated her thought was not terror - it was clear from her tone that she had not been scared by the Joker. Just the opposite, in fact. He'd been charming, she'd been social; he had questioned her, she had been honest. But in the six months that Harley had been active in the Asylum she had never felt so blatantly rewarded by a patient's progress. Something in the pit of her stomach had shifted...there was an ember of confidence where there had been none before. There was the unexpected and yet long-desired sense of excitement.

And now, much like a rollercoaster to a disenchanted rider, her stomach was about to betray her.

Watching her swagger through the corridor, Molly shifted in the nurse's station just thirty feet down the hall from where Harley was now. Lifting her hand she smiled and waved at her enthusiastically. But her happiness was not acknowledged by Harley, and her expression quickly veered from joyous to concern. Harley recognized the clammy feeling on her forehead and hands, she could feel her heartbeat quicken and her stomach lurch.

Without another moment's warning, Harley covered her mouth and ducked into a nearby staff bathroom, burst through the steely door of the very first stall, and was immediately sick. Being caught off guard as such was enough to send her into a coughing fit afterward, her white-knuckled hands clutching the toilet seat, her elbows locked to support her weight. There had not been more than ten seconds of this embarrassment before she felt a reassuring hand on her back, another holding back her hair.

Reaching out and pulling a few pieces of toilet paper to wipe her mouth, Harley slumped exhaustedly to the side, sitting with her back against the cinder block wall which was painted the recognizable color of taupe that the rest of Arkham was. Her face was flushed as she looked up to Molly, who stood with her shoulder leaning against the door of the stall. Where one would usually be disgusted, Harley was surprised to see that the nurse seemed completely at ease, and smiled encouragingly at her.

"God, I'm sorry Molly..." Harley croakedthrough crumpled toilet paper, before tossing it in the porcelain basin and flushing it all away.

Molly just crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. "What are you kidding? I'm a nurse. I've cleaned out bed pans and mopped vomit off of walls. Not to mention - I was a sister at Lambda Psi Delta for four years. I've held back my fair share of hair."

Lambda Psi Delta was the party girl sorority at Gotham U. Often Harley would hear gossip about the loose girls that lived there, but she didn't say anything about that now. "Still..." she whispered and leaned her cheek against the gloriously cold concrete. Shame was part of it. Harley hadn't thrown up since some frat party where she'd had too much to drink, back when she'd been twenty.

Dismissing her embarrassment with a wave, Molly crouched down a little closer to her. For a brief moment, Harley thought she was inhaling to speak, but instead she took a few short sniffs of the air. It didn't take much to see what she was doing, and once she caught on, Harley raised a brow and chuckled slightly. "I haven't resorted to drinking on the job just yet, Mol," she told her with a gentle smirk. "Though... I might have to now."

Holding up a finger to silence her, Molly stood and pushed open all of the stall doors to make sure the place was empty. When she came back to crouch next to Harley again, she nodded. "The story is always good if the shrink pukes." Harley gave her a bit of a shocked look. "It's true! They told us so in class."

_What an amazing and skilled assumption_, Harley thought to herself, and gave into the possibility that it would often be right. She sighed, tipping her glasses up on her face. Arkham had instructed her not to tell anyone, probably to save face just in case she'd been successful. What had made her sick was not what had transpired. "I'm not supposed to tell," Harley mumbled with a hint of self-consciousness.

But as soon as she had finished, Molly gave her a look that firmly portrayed her disgust. Crossing her arms tightly and sucking her teeth with a heavy dose of attitude, she rolled her eyes in such an exaggerated way that Harley thought they might fall right out of her head. "Girl, _please_... what the hell are you talking about?"

Wiping her hand down over her mouth once more, stretching out her bottom lips between her index finger and her thumb, Harley swallowed hard. If she couldn't tell Molly, who could she tell? "Arkham brought me up to meet the Joker." Her tone was flat and simple, and had the kind of hint at epiphany that Molly needed to absorb the shock of the situation.

"Oh. My. God. Are you _kidding_ me?" The young woman's gaping maw gave Harley a moment to peer at her teeth, which stood out white and sparkling against her dark skin. After taking a second to drink in the information, Molly just shook her head in amazement. "So...what was he like?" she asked, with the kind of awe in her voice that a child would have at the most farfetched tale they'd ever heard.

"He's uh... well, he's charismatic, intelligent, skeptical." Harley stopped and smiled faintly, shaking her head. He was all these things and more - nearly impossible to describe. Harley could have gone on and on about the little details of his face, how he had so much character in that smile of his, how he was not nearly as frightening as everyone thought him to be, how there were moments when he wasn't squinting his eyes or scowling where one might even find him attractive...

Harley neglected to mention those thoughts.

"So...?"

"So what?" Harley asked, not sure which direction Molly expected her to go from there.

"So what's the problem?" Molly asked, her eyes growing even darker then she leaned in toward Harley. "What had you so freaked out that you were walking down the hall like a zombie and then ran in here to toss your cookies?"

She had a point. After all...if the Joker wasn't nearly as terrifying as she had initially thought, then what had her so anxious that she'd be physically ill over it? It wasn't the crimes committed, or Harley's lack of experience with violent psychopaths...

It was the fact that she didn't have a stitch of confidence. Sure, she'd played it cool this time, but she had been instructed to go in and have a perfectly casual conversation with the guy. No therapy, no questions. Just talk. Talk like two normal people would talk. And now that the Joker had demanded Harley as his therapist...well, now she wasn't feeling so confident. Knowing that she had to walk into that room tomorrow and operate not just as a confidant but also as a therapist, that she would have to narrow down his diagnosis and quite possibly testify on the Joker's behalf...

That was when the nausea kicked in again, but Harley fought it down with a swallow and turned to Molly, who was patiently awaiting her answer. Inhaling deeply she held her breath to keep down the sick as it burned in her stomach. "He spoke to me...Arkham wants me to be his therapist."

Never one to disappoint, Molly gave her the best response she'd had all day: silence. Harley never thought she'd appreciate it so much. For a couple moments she sat, her legs outstretched along the bottom of her stall and past the metal divider into the next one, Molly crouched, her shoulder pressed against the open stall door. The two of them were quiet for a moment longer, until Molly finally found her voice again.

"The worst thing you can do in there is doubt yourself, or censor yourself." She uncrossed her arms and flattened her hand, gesturing so as to give the impression of pushing away the insecurity Harley felt. "If you do, then he will too. Guys like him are smart enough to pick up on that, and you know it." Molly gave her an assuring smile. "You wanted to do this, and now you've got your chance. You can do it. Just give in to that feeling you had back then, and you'll be confident enough to pull it off. I promise." She stood, offering a hand to help Harley to her feet.

Harley took it. Dusting herself off and looking into the mirror across from the stalls, she smiled back. "Yeah...I know...I just never thought I'd get the chance."

Shrugging, Molly gazed at herself in the mirror, adjusting a few of her stray curls before she turned to the door. "Listen, I was going to ask you if you wanted to get some lunch when you got back. But seeing you upchuck has...kinda put me off my appetite."

"Screw the food, I could use a three-martini lunch," Harley told her with a chuckle, adjusting the collar of her blue blazer.

Gasping in excitement, Molly waved her toward the door. "All right!" she called out enthusiastically. "Now you're talking my language!"


	8. Chapter 8: Confidence

Confidence was key. This she knew.

Over the better part of the afternoon, Molly had succeeded in getting her quite drunk on a really nice bottle of white wine in an expensive bistro over in Gotham's fashion district. Once the two were feeling up to it, they called in to their respective supervisors. Molly's excuse was that she wasn't feeling very well, and confessed certain "feminine problems" to her male boss. She was shameless. Harley had told Dr. Arkham that she wanted the rest of the day to contemplate tomorrow's session. He'd graciously agreed, but she imagined that Arkham would have done backflips and let her barbecue his dog if she kept the Joker talking.

Halfway through their bottle of _pinot grigio_, Molly had made it her personal mission to boost Harley's confidence to all but epic proportions. "You don't under_stand_ the kind of opportunity you have!" she'd exclaimed excitedly, grabbing handfuls of her hair in a mild sense of frustration. "You are a powerful woman in an industry dominated by men. If you pull this off you'll have Arkham, Kleinburg, _all of them_, wrapped around your little finger." In a sense, she'd been right - maintaining the reputation of the facility was what the board of directors was looking for, and Harley was their brand new meal ticket.

While taking a sip from her glass, Molly was struck with an epiphany. "You know what I think? I think that you're hiding this vixen, you know? I think you're hiding this powerful, confident woman." Harley had scoffed and waved a hand to dismiss the thought, but Molly had pressed on. "No! No, I see it all the time." With one hand, she pointed at her with an accusatory finger, and in the other hand she held a nearly empty wine glass. "You come across all quiet and demure, but really... you're tough, you don't put up with other people's shit, and you know what you want."

Harley had to laugh. Was it possibly for the girl to be _more_ dramatic while she was drunk?

"I'm serious!" She feigned insult when Harley laughed at her. "Think about it. Tomorrow, you walk into that room like you _own_ the joint, you keep that man talking, and you shock the shit out of that old fuck. Suddenly you're the talk of the town!"

Harley raised a doubtful brow. "Look at me, do I look like the kind of person who _owns _anything? I don't even own my car."

Draining the rest of her glass, Molly rolled her eyes much as she had before. Her head seemed to swivel around her neck and she snapped her fingers, in either a display of confidence or attitude, which, as Harley was slowly learning, poured from her every orifice. "Well you never know, but by tomorrow morning you will." And with that devilish look in her eye, she raised a defiant hand up over her head and signaled the waiter. "Check!" she called out and then swept Harley into a whirlwind of professional couture.

By six o'clock Harley entered her apartment, clutching bags from Saks Fifth Avenue, Sephora, Bloomingdales, and Victoria's Secret along with a very firm set of instructions: _You don't need to rule the world, you just need to look like you do_.

The next morning, she woke up early: showered and took the time to actually blow-dry and style her hair. Nothing outlandish, but not in its usual bun. She had tied it up, sure - she always wore it up. But today she wore her bangs a little looser to frame her oval face. She wore a crisp white shirt that used buttons in the back to cinch the waist, and a black, high-waisted pencil-skirt that ended just at the knee. A foreign concept - pantyhose - had finally managed to worm its way into her wardrobe, and she slipped on a simple pair of not-so-high-heels that had cost her half a paycheck.

Vaguely she remembered saying to Molly, "Where do you think I'm going? This is not a date."

To which Molly had quickly responded: "Eww! Of course not! But if this is the way you dress on a date, you've got bigger problems. You're dressed for a job interview, which is exactly what this is."

Molly was right. If she did well today, she'd make tenure for sure. But now, as she stood outside the door of their first session, she wasn't so sure. She didn't feel much like herself in the shoes, and the make-up, and the expensive clothes. She didn't look wildly different, she was just a gussied-up version of her normal boring self.

For a moment, Harley had a self-deprecating thought: _You can put lipstick on a dog, but that doesn't make it any less of a dog._

"Are you ready Harley?" Arkham's voice suddenly came from behind her and she jumped ever so slightly. She watched as the Joker was brought in from a separate entrance, two armed guards restraining him. They pushed him down by his shoulders into the aluminum chair, and he landed in the seat rather suddenly.

"The guards will stay during the duration of your session, for your protection," he explained, but she inhaled sharply and shook her head in disapproval. It was bad enough that Dr. Arkham was going to be listening in on their conversation, but some dimwitted guards who could end up a liability to confidentiality...

"No, absolutely not." Harley straightened her back as she turned to look at him. "You risk a lot of leaked information if you let anyone else listen in on these discussions. Besides, how much truth do you think he'll divulge if he thinks he's going to get manhandled for any little threatening thing he says?"

"If he threatens you, I'm pulling you out."

"If he _threatens _me," Harley shot back, "I'll remind you exactly why I'm doing this in the first place." She turned back to the observation window, beyond which the Joker sat quiet and unimpressed.

Scowling, Arkham handed her a folder. She already had the Joker's case file, but this file was thinner and heavier, filled with cardstock. "What's this?" she asked, flipping it open to inspect its contents.

"It's today's session." The cards were marked with the telltale inkblots she'd seen in class a thousand times. "It's a Rorschach test. I trust you're familiar with them?"

_No, I just managed to become a psychiatrist without knowing anything about a Rorschach test. _"Day One and you want him to complete a Rorschach test?" The idea in itself was pretty ludicrous. In order to complete a Rorschach, the patient usually had to trust their therapist enough to tell the truth about what mental images the blot was provoking. It was easy to think one thing and admit to another. In other words, it was a very easy test for the Joker to manipulate.

Arkham was adamant. "We already know that his answers will be overwhelmingly negative. We'll test him now, then we'll test him again in three months and compare the results." The Doctor's steely gaze fell cold and flat against the Joker, not bothering to make eye contact with Harley in the least.

"Assessing developing comfort level?" Harley idly wondered. Three months was just long enough for the Joker to forget all the tiny details that the blots would have brought to mind the first time. Those subtle differences would tell gigantic truths about his mental state, but regardless, she didn't like it one bit. It seemed too standard, and just boring enough to completely lose the Joker's interests.

"Precisely." Finally ripping his gaze away from the Joker and back to her, he gestured toward the door. She was shocked to see that his expression hadn't changed in the slightest and he offered her the same cold glare that he had just used to examine her patient. "I'll be here and the guards will be just outside if you need them."

There was one last tiny wave of panic. She didn't think Arkham would dismiss her so quickly. He had expected confidence from her, to the point where it might as well have been part of her job description. Nevertheless, she took a few deep breaths to bring her heart rate back to normal.

As she reached out for the door, Arkham put his heavy hand against her shoulder. "Remember: we don't know anything about his mind yet. For now, there's no reason to be afraid."

Harley was almost astounded. Never in a million years did she expect that Arkham would say something...intuitive. He seemed to assess her fear without asking about it. It didn't make her feel much better. If Arkham could sense her fear, then the Joker could probably smell it straight through the walls. Rather than pat him on the back for his vote of confidence, though, she simply nodded her head once and turned the handle to the interrogation room.

The last twenty-four hours had left her mind racing with questions she was completely unable to answer. What could she expect from him today? Could she expect anything at all? Would he be accessible some days, and completely closed off others? What if she couldn't get him to talk? Would Arkham remove her from the case? There was so much room for error, and Harley knew her mind would easily migrate to the same judgmental, self-doubtful thoughts. But this was no time to consider them. He was sitting right in front of her as she pulled the door open, hands bound, with a neutral, almost comatose look on his face.

The Joker acknowledged her as soon as she stepped into the beaming neon light of the room. His eyebrows piqued, his lips turned up into a smirk, and he snorted in amusement. Harley had to admit to a sense of insecurity as his gaze combed over her a couple times. He locked eyes with her, traced her form from the top of her head to the tips of her shoes and then moved up her legs, over her shapely torso and back up to her face. "Well, good _morning_."

Shivering in his seat, his eyes seared her flesh as she walked across the room to sit in a chair across from him, the stainless steel table separating them. Smiling back at him, she reflected on how sorely she missed the casual tone she had been able to conjure up yesterday, when she was summoned to meet with him on the fly. The tension had been killing her, and now being back here made her heart flutter around in her chest like a caged, wild bird.

"Hello," she greeted him mildly; calm, but clearly nervous. Placing the files down on the table squarely in front of her, she was concerned to see him furrow his brows and glance briefly at the files than back up to her.

Lowering his head a little, gaze still pointed up at her face, his expression relaxed and he smacked his lips before glancing off to the other side of the room. "What happened? In like a lion yesterday, and in like a lamb today?" he questioned her. "And they think I'm the complex and confusing one."

She shook her head violently to rid herself of the thoughts that sparked in her, and she inhaled deeply. Suddenly, though, a new thought dawned on her. If she was going to succeed to the extent she had yesterday, she was going to have to do exactly as she had been instructed to do: be honest. She wasn't here to ask questions and get answers. If she was going to get answers from him, both of them had to contribute.

Harley felt a strange wave of calm, of inner peace. If she wanted the truth about him, then he'd want the truth from her as well.

"No, I'm fine... I've been letting myself get the better of me since I last saw you. But just now, I managed to pull my head out of my ass, and I've come to a realization," she confessed, and it must have been the right thing to say, because it made the Joker turn his head to her so sharply that he immediately put his hands to his neck, as if the muscle had reacted too quickly. When she saw, once again, that one of his hands had to trail after the other due to the handcuffs, her eyebrows furrowed.

"Can I ask you a question?" She kept her tone serious, but not clinical.

"Isn't that your job?" he shot back, rubbing the nook of his neck.

Rolling her eyes, she held her finger up and rose to walk back to the door. When she opened it, she strode right past Arkham (whose expression was one of total shock) and through the door to the hallway, where two guards were standing. A few seconds later she'd returned with a small set of keys. Without saying a word to the stunned and sputtering doctor, she waltzed right back into the interrogation room and closed the door behind her.

Spinning the keys around her finger, she slid casually back into her seat and looked at him. "I get the feeling you talk with your hands. Am I right?"

The Joker clearly found her question confusing, because he looked at her in such a way that told her that he didn't really need to answer it. The keys halted flat against her palm, and she held them there for a moment. "I don't like the fact that you're cuffed. _Really_ inhibits conversation. And what I realized is if you're going to talk to me... then I'm going to have to talk to you too, now aren't I?"

Smiling he pointed at her with one hand, although both of them gestured in her direction. "Did you know that only five percent of communication is verbal, and nearly fifty-five percent is body language?"

_What a manipulative thing to say_, Harley thought. He suggested the very notion of freeing his hands without actually _asking _her to uncuff him. Whereas any old psychotic would beg for the cuffs to come off, he simply intimated a possibility of better communication. He had already consciously decided that this was her goal, and was looking to benefit her while simultaneously benefiting himself.

It was the most graceful bit of psychotic behavior she'd ever seen.

Giving him much the same smile as she had the other day, she stood and leaned over the table, using the keys to remove his handcuffs. "And the other forty percent is eye contact," she explained, removing the metaphoric shackles from his communication as well as the ones around his wrists, a pleased glance in her eyes. He didn't seem to have a problem with maintaining his own penetrating gaze. He was impossible to intimidate, and there was something about that quality that promised a good conversation.

He watched her intently as she settled back into her chair, rubbing both his wrists. "So they say..." he cooed, and then leaned over, his elbows resting on the table. "You look different today..." his raspy voice came in a kind of pleased growl. "Do a little bit of shopping last night to get ready for your big day?"

His question was defiant, as if he asked her just to make her feel unstable, but she responded coolly. "No... what makes you think that?"

Though he seemed to comprehend her question, he gave her a sharp glance that cut to the heart of the lie. "Because you don't look the same way you did yesterday." Somehow he'd known that she'd gone shopping the day before, but whatever the reason, he pushed on to the next topic. "What's on the agenda today, Doc?" He pointed to both of the files that she'd placed on the table. "Gonna ask me another list of questions, hook me up to some _fancy_ machine?" he said, lifting his hands and shaking them back and forth at the idea of psychiatric treatment. "I got gypped. I thought there'd at least be a chaise involved."

"Oh, there are chaises. They're for deep therapy... techniques that don't require _eye contact_, which as we've just established is..." And here, Harley crossed her legs. "Very important." She offered him a very wide grin when she watched his eyes flash from her legs and back up to her face. "No, today..." She lifted the file that Arkham had given her just a few moments ago. "I've been asked to administer a Rorschach test. But... I've decided against it." Placing the file back down, she could almost hear the old doctor's muscles tense up.

The Joker appeared to be fond of that confused gaze, since he used it so often. It was almost mocking, as if he was constantly on the verge of asking you whether or not you were kidding. Harley addressed his confusion before he had the chance to ask. "Because... well, because... I think it's important that you and I talk a little bit. No one's going to be able to draw any conclusions from the results of any of your tests if we don't understand the way you think at least a little bit." Harley's smile was sheepish when she shrugged her delicate shoulders.

It was difficult to decipher what he was thinking behind those eyes. His gaze turned apathetic; the particulars of his treatment meant nothing to him if he couldn't manipulate her. While he couldn't do much for now, she could tell that the wheels were turning, looking for something to latch onto.

There was silence between them, though it wasn't hesitation on Harley's part. She'd had sessions where patients had said nothing, and she'd said nothing in return. She'd once had a professor tell the class "Never be afraid of silence. Sometimes you'll find that the patient say more with silence then they could say with a thousand words." But that wasn't going to fly in this case. Arkham was standing behind the observation window waiting for the Joker to do or say anything. If she wanted to stay, he was going to have to speak.

Just when she thought he would say nothing at all, he spoke up without taking a breath. "What do you expect me to say? You expect I'm going to sit here and tell you about some sort of abusive childhood? Or how about...oh, I know, a severe case of mental illness in my family?" His tone was harsh, cynical, doubtful.

Calmly moving her eyes away from him, her hands sliding down the black skirt to smooth out its creases, she shook her head, a hint of absurdity in her expression. "No, I figure that would be the very last thing that you'd divulge to anyone, let alone a therapist on your very first day of treatment." One of her hands trailed through her bangs and tucked a few strands behind her ear. Smoothing her palm under her jaw, she leaned her the elbow on the table and propped up her chin with the back of her hand. "I am curious about a couple things, though."

Once and every so often Harley would say something that would make the robust features on his face twitch: an eyebrow would lift, or his eyes would pull away for the briefest of moments. Her curiosity stirred something in him, and immediately Harley thought_: Egomaniac_. Egomaniacs had a tendency to fulfill the curiosity of others, often joyously answering questions they knew the answers to - and even the ones they didn't necessarily know.

"Like..?" he asked, longingly, drumming his fingers on the table, eyes watching his fingertips dance atop the reflective metal.

She was sure that everyone had a question or two for the man. Like how he could do such monstrous things, how he could discard ethics and morality as a human being to threaten the lives of hundreds of people. He'd answer these questions with ease, and yet the answer could be discovered without a question being asked. Egomaniacs, however, responded well to personal analogy.

Harley had long thought of a story to tell him. "When I started college, I knew this kid who was a nihilist... you know? The type that profess that they don't really care about anything or anyone? This guy thought he could take what he wanted from the world and push the consequences back on his own ideologies and philosophies." As Harley spoke she could see him become engaged in what she was saying. Tiny little gestures that suggested his interest - his shoulders pulled forward, his hands folded inside themselves and rested casually, his chin tilted down, closer to her still. The responses, though minuscule, pushed her to continue.

Tinting her head up to scratch under her jaw, she moved her chin back to rest in the palm of her hand, with such a casual gaze that there could have a bottle of wine between them. "He played the part very well. Shaved his head, got really into punk rock as I recall... didn't have a job, never had any money, excused his behavior on the fact that he cared about nothing." Scoffing, she sat up, waving her hand in disgust. "Now, that wasn't what got to me."

"Then what was it? Did he have a girlfriend? Pay massive amounts of money for his overpriced education? Drive a nice car?" the Joker asked, quiet but enthused. Here he smiled, and a very funny thing happened when the Joker smiled - it always seemed to consume his entire face. The only thing that existed in that room was his smile, and when he did it, the only thing she could focus on was his mouth. It was a marvel of expression. In her mind Harley could only compare the feeling it gave her to watching a scene in a movie that you knew would garner some sort of award. The smile was so..._satisfying _that one forced itself upon her face in turn.

"No... well, I mean I suppose those things factored into it." Allowing him to be right, in a sense, would further feed his fascination, and so Harley let him have it. "And maybe you can help me out here... but to be a nihilist is believe that life is devoid of objective meaning." Harley sliced her hand through the air. "Bereft of passion, to care about nothing, yes?"

A glimmer of intelligence flickered in his eyes as he narrowed them ever so slightly. "Such a black and white way of thinking. The only thing those people are interested in is their beliefs."

"Exactly!" She pointed at him and his chin shot up in response. "If you care about nothing, then how can you preach so willfully about something, about anything at all, if you supposedly don't care about it?"

His face deconstructed itself, seeming to implode upon her finding. His smile dropped, and his lips pucked in consideration. His firm, thick, thoughtful eyebrows lifted as his sable orbs looked away.

When Harley stretched out her hand to him, silently asking for his opinion, there was the most amazing sound. It reverberated through the table, up her arms, straightened her spine and made her hair stand up on end.

He was laughing. It started out as a low rumble, but amplified, rose and shuttered like leaves on a tree hit with a gradual wind. "What a joke!" he said, slapping his hand against the table and pointing back at her. "You think he even considered that?"

"Not for a moment" She shook her head, chuckling softly. "And I found it so hypocritical. And you know, I hadn't thought about him in years, except last night I was sitting at home, and I was trying to figure out what I was going to say to you today... I thought of this guy."

The Joker's happy face fell. He twisted it into a theatrical, mocking gaze. "You're not about to put me in the same boat with that schmuck, are you?"

"Oh God no!" she exclaimed and he seemed almost relieved. "No, but I thought about the questions we used to ask him. We used to tease him. 'Hey man, you seem to really enjoy that coffee you're drinking. Would you say you're really indifferent?' or 'Well, if you're really a nihilist, then why do you even bother getting out of bed in the morning?'" Harley shrugged. "He never really answered. But it got me wondering..."

Before she could even ask, the Joker was answering. "What people do, what you do, our behavior... is subconsciously decided by the rules we agree to. The rules 'society' presents to us." He emphasized the word with air-quotes. "You want to know if I'm a nihilist?"

"I don't think you are one."

He grunted in amusement, shaking a finger. "Riiight...there are things that I care about." He shifted in his seat and pulled at the collar of the white jumpsuit he was wearing.

There was something that confused Harley at that point. Normally, one would expect someone to go on and tell them about those things they claimed to care about. But the Joker was different. The way he was looking at her now... it was almost if he expected her to guess what he cared about.

She wasn't new to this... to come right out and ask the Joker what he cared about was a question that was short on the tact he was now expecting from her. Debating what to say next would make or break his opinion of her, and she didn't take it lightly. She knew that Arkham was writhing with excitement behind the window. "If one were to loosely categorize you, which... I believe may be the only way to categorize you..."

"Thank you," he said gratefully.

"You're welcome...then I would say, again, loosely...that your behavior closely represents a neo-anarchism that very few are familiar with on such a degree of realism. Very few have the balls to act as radically as you have." Everything she said was very calm, very calculated. Giving the Joker the sense that she had a positive perception of his intellect, of his wit, of his behavior, might be enough to keep him engaged.  
And whereas a skilled therapist would have to simply act as if they were impressed, Harley found that it was very hard to deny the fact that he was _supremely_ interesting. Particularly in the boring old fishbowl that her life had become.

"No one ties themselves indefinitely to one idea." He waved his hand. "Not you, or me... or anyone else." Flattening his palm on the table, he studied her face for a moment. "And no one knows exactly where they stand at any given moment. It _changes_." He poured a lot of passion into that last word, flourishing his fingers out from his palm when he said it." "How I'm acting right now? Might change in just a few seconds, and the same goes for you."

Sometimes, just sometimes, Harley had this way of looking at people. She didn't notice when she was doing it. Her father used to say she was sizing people up with that glance, but she never felt intimidating when she did it. Tilting her chin down, those two blue peepers of hers peered out from behind a set of thick black lashes and rimmed glasses. Her face was darkened by the shadows her hair created around her face, and the smallest of grins painted over her mouth.

"It changes, huh?" she asked quietly and used her index finger to push her glasses up the bridge of her nose. The lenses caught enough light to render her eyes invisible. "That's a very interesting thought...very true."

There was no stirring, no moment of hesitation. The beginnings of his sentences seemed to cling to the end of hers, and vice-versa - so much so that Harley was beginning to think that maybe he was communicating with her because he actually wanted to, not because of some pent-up need to twist and toy with whichever doctor had the gall to sit in front of him. "If it's so true, than what about you?"

When the light on her glasses gave way, one would find it very easy to discover a menacing stare gazing out from behind them, but there was none. In fact, she seemed pleased. "What _about_ me?"

"Well..." he started, lifting his hands and spacing them a couple feet apart. "Where are you on the spectrum between sane and...strange?"

She couldn't help it, a smile had crept up on her lips. Harley gave him a bemused chuckle. "I think my job expects me to be over here," she said, gesturing to the hand he used for sane. "But, in all actuality, I think I'm somewhere around here." Her index finger pointed to the center of his imaginary scale.

He nodded, seemed apathetic for a moment, and than shrugged. He leaned back, clicking his tongue. "That's a shame...because all the people in the world worth living are always a _little _strange." A vibrancy filled the curve of his mouth, and just as she drew a breath to reply, there came a gentle knock at the window. He turned to glance at it, eyebrows furrowed at the sound of the interruption. "What was that?"

Harley collected the files and moved to rise from her chair. "That's Arkham, telling me my time is up, and to prepare myself for a major chewout session for not getting you to analyze the Rorschach blots."

Looking at Harley's face and over to the one-sided mirror, the Joker spoke to it as if he was talking directly to the old doctor himself. "Y'know," he said loudly, lifting a brow, "I'm just going to tell her they all look like bats anyway. What would be the point?"

She stood, chuckling. "You know... if the people in this place had a sense of humor, more therapists might have had little more luck with you." He did have a way with humor, dark as it might have been. He always had a punchline, even if you weren't telling him a joke.

When his eyes moved from the window and back to her, his head seemed to roll on his neck, his chin resting over on his shoulder. "No, no, no...only you. You keep comin' around... and I'll keep talking."

Harley must have appeared shocked, because he seemed very pleased with the reaction he had gotten out of her. By saying such a thing, the Joker might have single-handedly kept her on this case - and in good graces with Arkham. "I... I don't..."

"You can tell him I said that," he whispered, and shot her a smile so charming that he must have seen her blush. "Now, you just close your mouth, and I'll see you tomorrow."

Indeed, she'd been gawking, but it was more out of unexpected appreciation than anything else. "Ye..." She took a deep breath and shook her head. "Yeah... I'll see you tomorrow." In her heart, she felt the need to thank him. She knew there was no way that Arkham would be discouraged by their meeting with the amount of information on his beliefs that she had just uncovered. There was no time for 'thank yous' with Arkham knocking at the window, though. Harley hesitated for a moment with the thought, and the Joker gave her an amused glance.

"Goodbye, Harley..."

With a brisk nod she turned, and the door to the observation room was thrown open. A rare sight was waiting for her there: a calm, genuinely pleased Dr. Arkham. Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his lab coat, he nodded his approval. "Good job, Dr. Quinzel."

When the door had closed Harley's back fell against it, and clenching the Joker's file to her chest, she flashed the old man her most dazzling smile, though it was more for herself than for him.

Good was _not even_ the word.


	9. Chapter 9: Stolen

The Major Crimes Unit was a separate entity from the rest of the Gotham police department. It was a 24-hour operation that ran on a skeleton crew during the midnight hours. This was Jim Gordon's old department, and he had run it with a sense of pride and dignity which he shared with only a select few of his staff. Now that he had "the Big Job", as officers often referred to it, it was hard for him to make the time to regulate the MCU as he once had.

So, maybe the job had been handed off to someone else, but that didn't make it less _his_. Indeed, his responsibilities ran wide, but at the end of the day, the sun always set in MCU to Jim, and it always would. In his chest beat the strong and true heart of a detective, and getting himself involved in affairs that no longer belonged to him was an inevitability.

Rarely, they would call him in the middle of the night if they had a heavy case. As the commissioner, he was always on call, but the calls from MCU were few and far between. Jim knew the lull in the crime rate was temporary, and he told his wife this unfortunate fact nearly every day. Barbara said the first few months it had been hard to sleep. She kept expecting the phone calls that hardly ever came anymore. But when she did finally grow accustomed to uninterrupted sleep, she told Jim she could never coast off again once he'd left on a call. She'd gotten to used to feeling him beside her.

Today was going to be a long day for Barbara Gordon.

The telltale Nokia cell phone ring went off at 2:11am. Jim always kept the cell phone in the same place: on top of the glowing green alarm clock. With faces buried in the pillow, the two of them stirred from sleep. Glancing up at the clock and grasping weakly for the phone with a numb arm, Jim flipped it open and spoke groggily into the handset. "Jim Gordon," he whispered quietly, but it was no use, he knew Barbara was awake.

"Jim, sorry to wake you..." The voice of Captain Brutus Carpozo was on the other end of the line. If there was an emergency at the MCU, he was always the first one on the scene. He had Jim's old job, by Jim's own request.

"What's up Carpozo?" Jim asked, flicking his glasses to unfold the ear piece and sliding them onto his face.

"We need you down at MCU. We've had a break-in." Brutus had this amazing capacity to act as calmly as humanly possible, particularly in the worst of worst case scenarios. He spoke very matter-of-factly, but Jim was still confused. He sat up and rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and index finger - making the crow's-feet wrinkles forming there even worse, he was sure.

"What do you mean we've had a break-in?" It didn't make sense how anyone would or could break into the department without being caught. The building was crawling with cops, and each and every one of them had to swipe in and out to unlock the doors. The place was never left unattended, and it was swimming with cameras. If someone got in, they sure as hell wouldn't be getting out.

"Well, Jim... it wasn't so much a break-in as it was a robbery. Listen, I rather give you the details in person, can you swing by? I'd say I wouldn't keep you late, but really..."

"Yeah... yeah, I'm on my way."

He felt Barbara's warm hand on his forearm and he looked over to her. Hanging up, he gently took her hand in his and tugged it softly. She was still laying down, and leaning over, he kissed her on her cheek. "Please, sweetheart... go back to sleep."

"What's the use? Sometimes I wonder how anyone can sleep in this town," she told him quietly before she released him. Barbara would always tell him that she felt a little heavier when the mattress felt lighter. It was enough to make him want to stay in bed all day.

At the MCU, there was a clamor of activity. Day cops and night cops were scrambling, taking stock and inventory of what they had, what was missing, and if anything had disappeared that wasn't listed on a chart somewhere. Although everyone was in a state of panic, Jim had to admit he'd missed it. That constant sense of urgency really turned Jim's crank... it was a completely different world than the high-rise office and classic oak desk he inhabited now. A cop goes through strange changes when he goes from the street to the desk... Jim was beginning to feel his age, but here, he was twenty-five again. The air was fresh, the faces were new, and the electricity was contagious. It wasn't long before he caught on again.

Carpozo found him and gave him the rundown. "Sorry I had to pull you in. I didn't call you as a member of the MCU, I called you in as commissioner. We've got an issue." As they walked down the hall together, the Captain handed him a file. "No swipes in, no swipes out."

Okay, now Jim was really confused. How could there be no swipes in or out, and yet there everyone was, some faces he hadn't seen in months, having a meltdown that the place had been ransacked? "Then how do you know that anyone broke in?"

"Because of this." When the men turned a corner they were suddenly inside an artillery storage unit. This was where the MCU kept firearms that had been confiscated and kept as evidence at trial. At any time the locker had between 150 and 300 pieces of weaponry. Everything from handguns to grenades was kept in here... bullets and ammunition of all kinds. There was one way in and one way out, there were no cameras inside, but the entrance could be seen from five different points of surveillance.

And now the place was empty.

"Sweet Jesus..." Jim whispered to himself and ran both hands through his thick dark hair. There'd be no getting back to Barbara tonight.

"Internal Affairs has been notified. We called in Marshal Grant just after we called you. He should be here any minute," Carpozo told him, but Jim could hardly hear him over the rush of blood flowing to his head.

There had been enough weaponry in this room to arm a small army, or a very large mercenary unit. Handguns, semiautomatic assault rifles - even that bazooka they had confiscated from the Joker had been housed inside this room... and now every bullet, every fleck of gun powder... gone.

Brutus Carpozo was a large man with a military background. His fair hair had a buzz cut and he was tawny-skinned. He was always intimidating and had a good four inches' height on Jim, but now even he looked pale and clammy. "We had a guy scheduled to do inventory here about three hours ago," he said. "It had been checked not six hours before that. We've concluded that the robbery happened some time between five o'clock yesterday evening and eleven o'clock last night. The place was fully staffed."

Jim felt his blood boil. His fingertips went cold and internally he felt the need to take the grown man by his shoulders and shake him vigorously. "Then could you please tell me how in God's green hell someone could have pulled this much artillery out of this building?"

"We've got guys going over the tapes now and making copies for internal affairs. We've also got a list going of people who were off tonight, and owners of all of the weaponry inside. We're working on it as hard as humanly possible. We've got men scouring this place for clues, anything to tell us how they got in and how they got out."

"And you better hope they good job of it," came a voice from behind them. Jim turned and was faced with Marshal Grant from Internal Affairs. He was a tall, handsome man, no older than forty-five, with just a whisper of gray hair at his temples - and he always smelled of expensive cigars. He'd taken over Dent's job at Internal Affairs, but unlike Dent had no aspirations in politics. He rode the train all the way to the top and had become chief of IA just last year.

Though he was clearly not impressed with the situation, he smiled when he saw Jim and shook his hand. "Mornin' Jim," he said politely. "Nothing like getting out of bed so early on a Saturday morning, huh?"

Was it Saturday? Jim never really knew anymore. When you were working seven days a week it was hard to tell. "Have you been brought up to speed?" he asked Marshal, the gentle air of defeat lingering in his voice.

"Yeah, I think we're all just about caught up at this point," Marshal said, releasing Jim's hand. "Maybe we should go somewhere where we can talk. Get out of the way you know?" He gestured for the three of them to head down the hall, toward one of the boardrooms. Jim obliged, and the three of them ducked down the wide corridor, moving through a cavalcade of hurrying police officers as they walked briskly.

MCU was stationed in a large, old building in downtown Gotham. There had been some upgrades to modernize the place, but to Jim, it hadn't changed one bit - so much so that when he reached into his pocket for a swipe card to open the door to the boardroom, there was a brief moment of internal panic when he realized it wasn't there. Brutus chuckled a bit, noticing Jim's flub, but said nothing when he skimmed his own card over the sensor attached to the door. There was a click as it unlocked, and he pulled the door swiftly on its hinge, holding it open for the other two.

Jim sat beside Brutus on the far side of the table, but Marshal slid out of his jacket, tossed it over the back of a chair, and seemed to pace along a wall with a long white board mounted on it. "Alright, there's a couple things my mind is wrestling with right now. We've all made a point of question number one: how did they get in and how did they get out? We've got guys scanning tapes?" he asked.

Brutus immediately jumped in. "We've got several men looking over surveillance from the last few hours, and we're singling out the people who were working their shift when the crime took place."

Somehow Marshal didn't seem entirely pleased with this. "Well, that's all well and good, but I want detectives from Internal Affairs interviewing those men, and I want my people to have replicas of those tapes. The more sets of eyes on this, the better."

Jim had to agree. He'd seen what was possible when a department was left to look after its own. Never in a thousand years could he ever believe that men he had put so much trust in could betray him and betray their team. It wasn't that the men down in IA were holier-than-thou, far from it... but even if a few of them were clean, then they had a better chance at success then one department full of crooked cops. As much as Jim loved MCU, he knew the place was dirtier than a back alley in the Narrows.

Brutus had never been one to argue, and gave the IA chief the affirmative without a second thought. "You'll have the copies in a couple of hours, and I'll have the night staff in with your guys as soon as you can get them here."

It didn't take much more than that for Marshal to whip out his Blackberry, shooting off emails as he continued to talk. "Alright, the second thing I want to know is what the total street price would be on an arsenal like that, and whether or not one person could move out all that weaponry."

"Maybe in several trips using a dolly, but by hand, alone? It would take a few hours at least," Captain Carpozo replied, with just a hint of exasperation in his voice. It was clear to Jim that Carpozo knew that his head was on the chopping block if they couldn't figure this out. There was two kinds of cleanup going on... there was the everlasting fight to clean up Gotham's streets, and there was a huge effort to be spent on reputation management.

"Alright, so this could not have been a one man operation. You're saying this had to be done in one fell swoop?"

How else could it be done? How could it be done at all? Gordon asked himself. He waved his hand over the table before tapping it a couple times lightly, if only to get the attention of the two men. "No... whether they walked the guns out one by one, whether they came in with a big net and hauled them out with a helicopter and fireworks, it wouldn't matter much. They could not get in and out of this building without being seen. There's just no way."

"Well, there's gotta be a way, Gordon. Otherwise, we'd all be here at three in the morning looking at a fully stocked evidence bunker, wouldn't we?" Marshal was just as confused at the other two, and for a few seconds the three men exchanged looks of utter bewilderment... not one of them with a logical thought in their head to share.

"Alright... we'll come back that," Marshal said. "The next thing I'm worried about is the press."

It was true. So many people in Gotham, and even some in the police force seemed to revel in the attention that the press would give them. But there was no bigger threat to Jim than the press. If word about the robbery had gotten out by now, Brutus would be out of a job tomorrow, and Jim would be packing up his desk shortly thereafter. Heaving a heavy sigh, Jim simply raked his hands through his hair once again in exasperation.

Brutus piped up again. "Listen Grant, I called in Jim because I knew that I had to, but if it's alright by you, I'd like to keep him as far away from this as humanly possible."

"Carpozo, there's no way..." Jim started, but Marshal cut him off.

"No... I think he's right. You're so far up over our heads that there's no way the public can point a finger at you to take responsibility of this. It's your job to manage the emergencies, not take responsibility for them," Marshal pointed out, but he might as well have been speaking Greek to him. Neither of them were making any sense. Jim knew he had problems with letting things go, but in his mind, MCU was and would always be _his _responsibility.

"No. No, there's no way I'm going to dodge this bullet." He shook his head, placing a thoughtful hand to his mouth. When he was dead serious about something, his tone was as quiet and as soft as a field mouse. When he was angry, it was another story, but he wasn't the kind of man to turn his back on responsibility, no matter how much hot water he found himself in. "Trying to hide from it will just make matters worse if the press does eventually catch wind of it, and I will not be made a coward." He took a deep breath, and then noticed some movement out the window beside the boardroom door. There was a young, well-dressed man walking toward them. He walked with such conviction that even when Marshal began talking again, Jim found himself hard of hearing.

The young man knocked upon the door a few times, and Jim immediately rose to open it for him. "Commissioner Gordon?" he asked in an enthusiastic voice. He was a little on the short and stocky side, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist and short, spiky black hair. Though Gordon was a little surprised at the interruption, he took the young man's offered hand in a firm shake. He wasn't a football fan, but felt as though the kid might as well have had the words '_defensive tackle'_ tattooed on his forehead. "They told me I'd be able to find you here. Is Chief Grant around?"

"This one of yours?" Gordon asked, pointing to the man at the door and stepping aside to let him in.

"Jesus Christ, Joe, that was fast," Marshal said and shook the young man's hand. "Jim, this is junior detective Joseph Callaghan. Came onto IA just last year."

That was certainly fast to make junior detective. The kid looked like he wasn't more than a couple years out of school, and even at three o'clock in the morning seemed tickled pink to be there...not to mention that Grant had sent out e-mails less than five minutes ago. "Awfully young for junior detective, aren't you? You sure made it here fast, boy. Did you fly?" Jim asked him with a weak smile.

"Oh no sir, but when Captain says there's trouble, I come a-runnin'." It was hard not to admire his gusto, but those kids always started out that way. He remembered being that age and working his beat as hard as he could. It didn't earn him any brownie points to his superiors, but he kept going just the same. He had been just like any other young cop. Had there been a department yearbook, he might have even been voted "Least likely to succeed."

This kid was different though. He was on a mission from something. "Besides," he quipped, "I was working at our archives office just down the street, looking up a cold case I was interested in when I got the e-mail. On my way over, I noticed something and I wanted to let you know right away." All three of them were standing now, and when Carpozo made his way over, the kid held out his hand to greet the MCU chief as well. "Don't wanna waste any time guys, looks like it might rain any minute, and if it ends up being something, then we'll need to collect evidence ASAP."

Grabbing his coat, Marshal walked over to the young man and nodded for him to lead the way. "Whatcha got?"

"Well, I parked at Hillside Park just down the block, and figured there wasn't much point in driving, seeing as it was just down the street. When I turned a corner, I walked past the alleyway between here and the old tenement building next door. Well...there's fresh tire tracks. I could tell, 'cause someone must've poured sand on an oil spill recently, since it was windy as all hell yesterday."

Damn, Jim though to himself. This kid had a great head on his shoulders. He kept up this level of observation, he'd make his full detective status in less than a year.

"Cap, you said in your e-mail there'd been a robbery," the kid went on. "Rule number one is 'keep an eye out for the getaway vehicle', right?" Marshal nodded as the four of them made their way outside. He'd clearly informed the other detectives, since a couple of them had already made their way out to scour the scene. "Well he wouldn't park right out on the street, but I know there's only one entrance to this building."

Jim could immediately smell the moisture in the air when they pushed past the large metal doors. It was going to rain soon, and the heavy early morning sky hinted at it; that strange color of orange from the city lights beamed down from the night sky. Officers were adjusting flood lights to inspect the ground, and pulling his suit jacket tightly around him, Jim peered into the artificially lit alley.

"See, right here, Commissioner," the junior detective gestured excitedly.

Callaghan was right: white sand that had been shaded black to pick up an oil spill from one of the dumpsters. It was scattered, but one could clearly make out fresh tire treads in the dirt, and the oil held its mold perfectly. Jim barked orders to a couple of officers nearby. "I want a plaster kit out here now, and I want whoever's not doing twenty things right now to determine the make, size, and age of these tire marks." But he was embarrassed once he said it. Running Brutus' department for him came naturally when he was there. Thankfully, when he turned to look at the Captain, he was just smiling and shaking his head.

As Jim pushed further into the alley, Callaghan followed him, both of them taking slow and careful steps so as not to disrupt any evidence. They glanced around eagerly, looking for anything else that had been left behind in the dirt: a shoe print, a shell casing, anything...

From the entrance of the alley, one of the officers swung over a flood light, causing shadows to jump around the narrow lane, and had Jim not been standing in the right place at the right time, he might have missed it all together. He noticed a particularly strange shadow, cast long against the wall, resembling the moonlight that sometimes shot through the California shutters of his bedroom. The light beamed against the wall, and he followed it up to what he'd noticed. A ventilation grate, twenty feet up, was swung open. Not very wide, maybe eighteen inches across, but it was enough. When it caught his eye, the rest of them seemed to notice it as well.

"Well, I'll be damned," Brutus muttered, taking a few steps in himself to inspect the small entrance into the MCU.

"You've gotta be shitting me. What is this? Some Hollywood heist? You mean to tell me that those bastards crawled through _the ventilation shaft_?" Marshal was just as perplexed, and if not more than a little angry. He stood there with his hands on his hips, open-mouthed as he stared at the grate.

"Sir..." Callaghan called out, and the three looked over to him.

He stood by a dumpster across the alleyway from where Jim, Carpozo and now Chief Grant were inspecting the ventilation grate. For such a robust young man, Callaghan seemed startled, clearly shaken. He held up his ballpoint pen - onto which was looped the trigger ring of a small handgun, the processing ticket still attached. "Call it Hollywood all you want, Captain..." He paused and looked at the small pistol in amazement. "This is where your robbers made off with their catch."

It might have only been a nine millimeter, but it was the most terrifying gun Jim had seen in a long time.

**NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR**

_Hey guys! I'm really getting some great responses on these chapters with Jim Gordon. I'm glad you're enjoying them, and if you get to the end of a chapter and say to yourself "Wow, I really loved this part" or "Jesus, that was really shit" Please write it down in a comment. It's the only way I'm going to learn. _

_Now the reason I'm writing this note is pretty exciting to tell you the truth. I've been speaking with my beta and we're in agreement that by the end of this week I will be enough chapters ahead to do what I'm affectionately referring to as a "blitz", in that I will post one chapter each day, **Monday to Friday** next week. So if you don't see a chapter next Sunday, be patient. _

_So, next Monday, keep a look out for chapter ten (which is going to be a doozy by the way... ^_~!). I know a lot of you have been saying that this story is not getting the attention it deserves, and if you honestly feel that way, and you have friends who are interested, this would be a great time to let them know. _

_O.K! that's it for now! Thanks for taking the time to hear me out guys! As always, Thanks for reading! _


	10. Chapter 10: Resist

**Note From The Author:** _Ok guys! This is it! Installment number one of the "blitz". If you're reading this you can inspect one entry per day until Friday June 18__th__. Enjoy, and please comment/review! Thanks!_

"Now _this_," the Joker said as he collapsed onto a large, overstuffed, indigo, velveteen chaise, "this is what I'm talking about. _Now_ we're in therapy."

Harley smiled. It was hard not to see the sheer joy that was painted on his face with the way he threw himself into the chair, and worked his way into the soft fabric. As he leaned his shoulders into the curved, extended backrest, he folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. "Alright…" came his heaved, relaxed reply. "I'm ready. _Cure_ me."

As if it was as simple as that. Despite his mocking tone, though, he did very little to dissuade her. At this point she'd caught on to the fact that, half the time, the Joker was not playing to his more serious side. "You said yourself the other day that people don't really find you very funny." With his file in her lap and her legs crossed, she tapped the notepaper with her pen. Superficially, she thought that if she kept up her constant smiling, she would make his superiority complex even worse.

Deep down, she didn't really care. His sense of humor wasn't really all that difficult to get behind.

His ears perked to the sound of her quiet laughter, and one of his eyes popped open to watch her. Rocking forward on his spine, he sprang up, using his momentum to sit straight. Placing both of his feet back down on the floor, his smile curved upward. "_You_ think I'm funny."

There was no question there. He seemed quite convinced that she found him funny. Harley didn't really have anyone to blame but herself… but to openly admit to that might have inflated his ego to the point of no return. "Oh, I don't know about that…" she said. "You have your moments. I think you have a very particular sense of humor." Further, if she admitted to her amusement, then she could have ruined their whole session. Everyone knew that when someone got you laughing, it was usually pretty hard to get them to stop.

With a bit of a defeated look, he leaned back into the soft, vibrant chair and folded his hands over his stomach. "Well, I'm sure a lot of people would agree with you."

She felt bad upon seeing his expression, though she wasn't entirely sure as to why. "Is being funny important to you?" she asked before standing up and moving the chair over to sit more alongside him.

The question was not exactly one that she expected the Joker to answer. It was a little too broad; too '_shrink-like'_. He did, however, notice her as she came closer to him, and softened his eyes into a enticed glance. "There's plenty of room right here," he said, patting the space of the chaise beside him, rolling onto his side and pressing his spine against the elongated backrest. Harley considered for a moment what the man wouldn't do to get a laugh, and then vaguely wondered if he was kidding.

"Seeing as you _must_ be joking, I'm going to take that as a yes..." Harley said with a bit of a smirk as she dug through the inside pocket of her lab coat. She pulled out a sleek, white object and a pair of pre-wrapped earphones. Carefully, she began arranging things in her lap as he readjusted himself into comfort.

Resting back in very much the same position as he had been in before, his eyes scanned the ceiling. The room they were in today was much larger, with a high ceiling. The walls were painted a dark gray color to correspond to the couch. It was dimly lit with halogen light, and the only objects in the room were the furniture. It didn't take long for the Joker to realize exactly what was going on. Sitting up again, he looked around the room in all directions. There was nothing, no windows, no ventilation shafts, just a door.

"This is _some_ room. I thought this was supposed to be a supervised session," he quipped, although the idea of being closely watched by Arkham caused some nameless, aggravated muscle in his stomach to tighten.

"It _is_ supervised. Today's session is technically a personality test." Showing him the object she had pulled from her pocket, it was instantly recognizable as an iPod, and when he reached out for it she closed her hand around it and pulled it away. Plugging in the earphones, she handed them to him. "This room is wired for sound; it's used exclusively for musical therapy. Dr. Arkham is remotely listening in, and later on he'll be taking a look at the notes I make regarding your physical response to stimuli."

There was a sense of relief that washed over the Joker's face when she mentioned that Arkham wasn't standing outside the door, pacing around like he usually was. He was about to make a crack about one's physical responses to stimuli, but when he looked at her, she gave him a weary glance, as though she expected to hear it. And, well… a joke just wasn't funny if someone expected to hear it.

"I should be clearly audible throughout the duration of the test…"

Without expecting him to, the Joker cut her off. "Stop talking to me like that." She snapped up in her chair at that, watching him with piqued brows as he slumped in the chaise. "If I was interested in listening to Keanu Reeves recite stereo instructions, then sure… but otherwise." He turned to glare at her, though not in any sort of way that terrified her or made her uneasy. "Now… be honest with me. You're going to waste a room like this on a _music test_?" he asked her with a questionable expression.

With his head tilted down and his brows lifted high on his forehead, it was hard for Harley not to laugh, and biting the inside of her lip lent just enough of a distraction. Her elbows rested upon her knees as she pulled herself forward to look into him, and when she did, he seemed to press himself back into the chaise a little further. "How about you be honest with me, and tell me why it is that when I actually try to start therapy with you, I always get some kind of retaliation?"

Harley always found herself in awe of how even the tiniest of actions from the Joker could become an intimidating tour-de-force. He would pull his mouth into a wide smile and snicker at her if he found her question particularly amusing…it left her wishing as though she have never asked. Quickly turning her face down to write something in his file, she could tell he was drinking in her weaknesses. He must have found it particularly funny, because when she looked up he had a fist over his mouth and was bouncing ever so slightly with repressed laughter.

"Something funny?" she asked in a less than amused tone, and had to wait a few moments before he'd settled down enough to catch his breath and answer.

"Yeah, actually… you're pretty pathetic, you know that?"

She was stunned. What on Earth had driven him to say such a thing? But it didn't take long for her mind to put it together. The setting combined with his demand for a more casual tone could have suggested something about his comfort level. Grinning, she leaned back in her chair. She'd given the Joker flack about deviating away from therapy before, but she couldn't help herself from following him down this line of questioning. "How long have you been waiting to ask me that?" she asked, and he laughed again, but instead of stifling it, it boomed and echoed across the large room.

"A while now…" His fingertips drummed on his thigh and his eyes flashed up to her again. "Are you this 'by-the-book' outside of work? I need to know if you're as uptight as that pretty little bun in your hair." He spoke through clenched teeth, expressing only a modicum of disgust.

Harley heaved a large sigh. "What is the matter with people? Doesn't professionalism count for anything anymore? I've got people from all directions telling me that I'm about as boring as a baked potato. Really, it doesn't do much for my confidence." She reached up and pulled the pin from her hair that held it in place. Harley's hair was very much unlike his. Where his hair was light and thin, hers was thick and dark. It had volume and a gentle wave that, when combined with her glasses, made her look like a secretary from the 50's "Better?"

The Joker smiled and tilted his head this way and that, to get a better look at her. "Not bad… but it sounds like you're the one who needs the chaise, not me."

"Just because my ego does not compare in size to yours doesn't mean that I have any deep seated mental problems." Tapping her pen against his file once again, it was clear that as time wore on her frustration levels were about to breach the ceiling that hung nearly thirty feet over their heads. She nodded tersely as she looked around the room. "You know, maybe we should continue to have our sessions in here - I think it might be the only room that will successfully be able to contain your head!"

"That's more like it!" he called out with a clap, and she snapped up in her chair once again. Had that been her voice that called out to him in aggression? Had he pushed her to that point already? Clearly Arkham was hanging on to see what would develop, since he hadn't called on her yet… but she could feel herself begin to sweat.

Her breath shivered as she exhaled, but the Joker seemed beyond pleased. "You're not so much a therapist as a robot. Now what makes the _deee_lightful Dr. Arkham think that I'm going to spill my guts to someone who can't communicate with me?" he asked, dramatically pressing his fingertips into his chest, while the other arm stretched along the back of the chaise. "You'd been doing so well…especially in that cinched blouse." Licking the corner of his lips, his eyes trailed away from her for a moment only to spring back a second later.

She was blatantly fed-up. Harley might not have been the most confident person in town, but she was usually very determined. The Joker's perverted, twisted view of her would not bode well if she ever did get him into therapy. "Listen to me," she said, digging her fingertips into her forehead, her eyes closed as if trying to focus on one particular thought. "I am not here to play this Hannibal Lector-esque game of _quid pro quo_ with you, I'm not here to convince you of how incredibly interesting I am, and I'm not here to be your best buddy, okay?"

"Well then how can you expect to learn anything about me?" he asked, with a patronizing tone that only sent Harley deeper into frustration.

"You're deviating from the rules of your therapy…"

"Well, that makes a lot of sense, considering that file you're holding has me down as a _deviant_, doesn't it?"

It did. Somehow he'd known, but she was beginning to understand that out of the two of them, the Joker was the one maintaining control. "Besides, I've never been a huge fan of rules…they really seem to get in the way. Maybe…" He trailed off and winked at her in such a way that it made the hair on the back of her neck stand at attention. "If you play things my way, you might get a little more out of me."

Her eyes focused on his, and she felt as though she was looking at him through a sniper's scope. Everything was beginning to tie itself together in her mind, like puzzle pieces on strings being drawn closer and closer together. "That's what this is all about?" The picture had finally dawned on her. "You're making such a big deal of pissing me off so that you can go against the grain?" She appeared disgusted at him. In all honesty, she couldn't stand those of her generation who wanted to '_fight-the-man_' - she knew they were fighting a losing battle. "And you call _me _pathetic? I might lack some confidence, but I'm not delusional about the society I live in."

There was always this hardness to the Joker's features. Everywhere you looked there were stressed wrinkles, or a twitching eyelid, or a furrowed brow. It wasn't say that he always looked angry - quite the opposite, and maybe that was the most intimidating thing about the Joker.

He never appeared angry, and so you never really knew when he was.

It was hard to tell when he wasn't actually looking at her, but with her emotional appeal came a very vocal backlash. "These 'rules of morality', these _laws_...to me they're _obstacles_. To me, they're roadblocks. But I don't let these things get in my way. Murder, theft, fear... these are just tools. I use them to change perspective." He spoke wildly with his hands as his eyes burned into her, and she found it hard to believe she'd been able to maintain such close proximity to a man who looked as thought he might lash out at her at any moment. "I use them in the same way someone uses words in a debate, or how an artists smear paint on a canvas. But to you, these things make me a criminal, a psychopath, a murderer... and that's just not the case."

It was the first time he'd spoken spoke to her this way. In her heart she knew it wouldn't be the last.

"You're not a murderer, a thief, or a psychopath? You really are delusional… If you're not these things, then what _are _you?" Her tone was sharp, condescending, and cynical, and although she immediately regretted saying it, it didn't take more than a second for the Joker to bring his foot to the lip of her seat and tilt it backward. For a moment Harley thought she might topple over, but as she gasped he leaped up from the chaise at lightning speed and took hold of the backrest to keep her from falling. She balanced precariously on the two back legs of the chair, almost helpless, her feet dangling off the ground.

"I know what I am! I'm a catalyst. What are you?" His theatrical tone seemed to pour from his mouth. Indeed, his mouth was the only thing Harley could look at as he hovered over her.

_What are you? _That was a question to end all questions. Particularly if Arkham had his way - and when the old doctor and three armed guards burst into the room, it lent her just the distraction she needed.

The Joker looked toward the door, thirty or so feet away. When he did, Harley flattened the bottoms of her feet along the two front legs of the chair that hovered above the ground. She pushed on them with such force that they pounded back into the floor and shot the Joker back into the chaise where he had been sitting just a moment ago. He bounced into the spring-loaded seat, and before he could take stock of what had just happened - and well before a panicking Dr. Arkham and his goons could reach them - Harley had placed her hands firmly upon his shoulders. There was absolutely no time for hesitation. Physical retaliation was always a last resort, but she knew if the guards had an opportunity to put a hand on him they'd beat him to within an inch of his life.

She used the momentum the chair had given her to kneel over his thighs, her knees pointed down into his flesh. While Harley balanced on her joints in his relaxed muscle, she heard his breath buckle. Satisfied that she had him pinned, she reached out her right arm out toward Arkham to stop him. As the scene unraveled in front of the old doctor, he watched with a look of nauseated shock, before stretching his arms out to hold the guards in their positions.

With any storm, there was always a period of mysterious calm afterward. No one moved. No one made a sound. And while Arkham and the guards stood half way across the room, Harley inhaled deeply through her nose and exhaled to release the adrenaline rush.

"Now...listen to me..." she started and the Joker stared back at her in amazement, although as her knees braced down his thighs she could see a small wince in the corner of his left eye. Harley knew her positioning on him was incredibly unpleasant, comparable to the feeling you get jabbed in the side by someone's elbow, or when a lover lays on you the wrong way. She was very close to him. So close in fact that even if he wanted to block out her words, he wouldn't have been able to.

"I… don't know what I am." Her answer was so abrupt that the Joker's head snapped back. "But I'll tell you what I'm _not_: I'm not your judge, and I'm not one of these therapists whose hearts are as empty as their heads." Harley weighed all of a hundred and fifteen pounds. When she felt the way his muscles easily twitched and writhed under her weight, she knew he could pick her up and toss her across the room like a rag doll if he had wanted to. Clearly he didn't want to just yet.

"I feel for you, I really do…" she went on, "but I can only reach so far. As beneath you as it might be, if you want to see the outside of your cell past your court date, you _will_ put up with this psychiatric bullshit." Her mouth moved around the words very deliberately, her face solemn. She looked at him as if the very notion pained her, and when his eyes finally focused on hers, his own face seemed to settle down. His angry grin softened, and the lines around his narrow eyes smoothed themselves out. When he looked down over her she could feel the muscles in his back relax.

Silence hung in the air like a guillotine's blade, and after a minute she said very softly, "Now... I'm going to get off of you... and I'd appreciate it very much if you didn't kill me."

But before she had the chance to move she felt a warmth on her thighs. She knew instantly that they were his hands, and they provided gentle pressure that kneaded her muscles and worked their way up to her hips where he squeezed her once ever so slightly. There was no time for patronizing him or enjoying a good laugh about his actions. She did not sneer or wave him off, because there was a sense of something disturbingly _real _about the way he touched her. He grinned as the blood rushed to her face, and with a relaxed sigh, he turned to Dr. Arkham and smiled feverishly.

"Could you give us a minute?" he asked.

Harley's expression dropped once again. When she stood, he released her without retaliation (though not without a very brief, yet very large, pout). Dusting herself off, she turned at the sound of rustling fabric as the guards made their way over to the Joker, who immediately threw his hands up in the air. The guards twisted his wrists behind his back to cuff him.

Furrowing her brows she snapped at them. "Stop manhandling him!" At her insistence both the guards and the Joker peered up at her curiously.

"The man could have killed you Harleen," came the sound of Arkham's cold and quiet voice. His motions were calm and graceful as he stepped toward the chaise. The three guards heaved the Joker up off the seat by his shoulders and Harley objected again.

"_Hardly_…and I fail to believe that he would have. He's resisting therapy like every other violent offender and he didn't hurt me." Harley's explanation appeared to take the old doctor by surprise. It surprised her, too.. The Joker could have very well killed her, but she wasn't about to let the hounds loose on him… and she could never admit defeat to the old man, not yet anyway. "_Do not_ manhandle him!" she ordered, and when they turned to look at Arkham he just nodded his balding head.

There was a shred of disappointment in the faces of the guards as they trudged off with the Joker toward the door. She'd moved to follow with intent to insure his safety, but Arkham stopped her with a heavy hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure they'll do just fine without you, Harley… I wanted to speak with you for a moment."

The Joker's giggling carried throughout the room. Glancing over her shoulder, Harley heard him call out "See ya later, Doll!" before they whisked him through the door.

Before Arkham could say a word, she was already apologizing, speaking at the speed of light "Sir, I'm dreadfully sorry, I just didn't know what else to do!" Giving him an exaggerated shrug, she watched as he let her carry on with her explanation, a thoughtful hand wrapped around his chin. "He got up, and I knew… I knew that if the guards got him before I did they'd beat him to a bloody pulp. There's no way he'd trust any of us after an episode like that, and he doesn't appear to have a lot of physical boundaries with me, he's been suggestive…"

"Harley…"

"And I know he's a bit of a pervert, but I really think that…"

"Harley!" Where his voice had been calm before, he called out in a tone that snapped her mouth shut. Her shoulderblades pulled back as she looked up at him with her blue saucer-eyes. "You've actually surprised me," he said. "I didn't think you'd be able to stand up to him, and you did. So often people forget that there are those who need protecting that don't often receive it."

As if there hadn't been enough commotion to lock Harley in her stupor, the last thing she expected at this point was sympathy from _Arkham_. Several wide-eyed blinks communicated her shock, and she nodded her head firmly. "Ye… yes, Sir, I agree."

"Will you walk with me for a moment? I've had a question I've been wanting to ask you, I just haven't had much of a point to until today." When he turned toward the door, Harley felt magnetically drawn to follow him, but she inhaled a gasp and quickly collected the Joker's file from off the floor before doing so. The door leading out into the hallway had nearly closed after him. By the time she made it there, she had to nudge it open with her foot to avoid dropping the file again. She hurriedly scampered after him and heaved a large sigh once she'd caught up.

Arkham began speaking as it she'd been there the entire time. "I don't suppose that you know, but my family has been the head of this facility for many years. In fact, my uncle was the very person who opened this facility and started the Arkham Foundation for Mental Illness."

Harley was getting used to this by now. He assumed she didn't know anything, and secretly she believed it was his complete lack of faith in anyone's mindpower but his own. She'd given up correcting him and instead just let him talk until he got to the point. "Every year," he went on, "we hold a fundraising gala in order to promote the initiatives of the facility and develop relationships with contributors, present recent developments in psychiatric health… that kind of thing."

_That's a laugh._ She hadn't seen any of the doctors here use any modern techniques. But she'd heard of the fundraiser before. Often it was touted as one of Gotham's glitzier events. All of the money came out to play: new _and_ old.

"Yes, Dr. Arkham, I've heard of it before. It's just around the corner, isn't it?" she asked, more to make idle chit-chat than anything else. The idea of sitting around a table with a bunch of stuffy socialites in tuxedos didn't seem like a great time to her.

"Well, I had one of the board members drop out unexpectedly…"

_I don't blame him_, she thought, and wondered if she'd whispered it underneath her breath.

"And I was wondering if maybe you'd like to join us," he concluded.

Harley thought maybe his invitation was a little bit of karma for her cynicism. She couldn't say no, although she really didn't want to say yes. The idea of spending more time with these people than she already did made her a little sick to her stomach. Although… the fact that, out of all of the doctors in the facility, he'd asked _her _was the real point of amazement. In fact, there were a few moments where she glanced at him with an open mouth.

"You…you want _me _to attend the fundraiser?" More than once Harley had been told she couldn't be taken anywhere, but Arkham's voice was insistent.

"Absolutely! You've made quite the wave for yourself amongst the board of directors, and I'm sure they'd love to have you!" He paused in his pace as they neared the elevator. "Mind you, it is a black-tie event… very formal. You'd have to dust something out of your closet…" he said with a bit of a laugh, and Harley's hesitant nervous chuckle followed it.

_Jackass…_Harley thought to herself once more, smiling sheepishly in response to that. He wasn't entirely wrong. "Oh, I'm sure I can make something happen. Contrary to what the Joker might think, I do clean up very well." She nodded for him to go ahead of her when the elevator opened.

"Wonderful. I'll put you down for one?" he asked, and then pressed the button for the ground floor. "I trust you won't be bringing a guest."

It was the longest eight-second elevator ride of Harley's life.


	11. Chapter 11: Silk

"What have we got so far?" Jim had waited until they were inside the building to begin asking questions. Having just crawled through the snake pit of reporters outside, he watched as they tangled and weaved for better angles through the windows of Gotham City Financial. Had it been a nice day they might have made easier work of it, but the gray tone of the sky matched the color of the slightly tinted windows. This morning, Gotham was one big slab of concrete; cold monochromatic colors, like a black and white movie.

Jim hated this time of year… but by the time December rolled around, you got so used to it that abundances of color became an unwelcome assault on the eye, much like the scene in front of him.

It was impossible to say that he'd been expecting something like this, but after the break-in at MCU it was only a matter of time until something happened. Internal Affairs had estimated that the total street value of the confiscated goods had been nearly three million dollars. "The bazooka alone could pull in ninety large in street value," Marshal Grant had told him, and in his head Jim knew that someone out there would pay it.

"It's not looking good," Chief Carpozo told him as the two men walked though the bank and toward the vaulted area. The place was huge. Gotham Financial was one of the largest investment banks in the city. It housed at any given time between two hundred-fifty and three hundred million dollars.

"How much do they suppose was stolen? Did they clear the vault?" Jim asked. Ahead he could see the crime scene investigation taking pictures; a few of them huddled by the vault entrance, while a couple more crept around inside, careful to not contaminate evidence.

Receiving a confused glance from Brutus, he watched as he stretched out one of his behemoth arms to stop Jim from taking another step. "What did they call you in here for?" he asked him curiously, as the Commissioner turned to offer his own bewildered expression.

"What the hell are you talking about? They told me to get my ass down to GCF on Monroe."

"For a robbery?" Well, now Jim had to think for a moment. When he'd gotten the call, he hadn't been told specifically what the situation would be, but he would admit his mind had automatically jumped to robbery. When his expression communicated this to Brutus, he smiled and shook his head. "You think we'd keep the press across the street for a midnight robbery bust?"

Jim's face dropped. "Homicide?"

"Quintuple homicide," came Carpozo's bleak reply, and before he could continue Jim had pushed his way through the vault to see the damage.

Inside were the bodies of five young men. A couple of them had managed to keep their masks on while a couple seemed to have had them pulled off, their hair askew and ruffled. The last one had his face blown clear off. It was a dismal sight, but Jim had seen it before.

"They say it never gets easier, but it gets easier… doesn't it?" The voice that came up from behind him was unmistakably Marshal Grant, and when Jim turned around to look at him he was shocked to see young Joe Callaghan standing by his side.

Truthfully, he was surprised to see either of them there. "Grant?" he asked and then nodded to his junior detective curiously. "You're bringing your rookie to a homicide beat? What are you even doing here?"

The kid didn't seem that offended, though Jim remembered wanting to blow up on a couple of superiors in his rookie year. He was a man; he could take it… even though he remembered returning home at the end of some nights severely distraught. Joe always seemed to have a smile on his face. That worried Jim more than a sight of a rookie being sick somewhere.

"We're here because Carpozo was keeping us in the loop," Grant said, and when Jim looked over at the oafish military man he wore a guilty expression.

Brow furrowed, he moved to the side while Joe Callaghan slipped a pair of latex gloves over his hands and carefully maneuvered past him into the vault. "Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on around here?" It was rare for Jim to get angry, and even now he tried to keep his tone just this side of firm.

Offering him his own pair of latex gloves, Marshal took the lead. "Well, when the CSI unit came in, they noticed these." Once they had made their way into the vault, he whistled to Callaghan, who instantly tossed him an empty jacket from a very large round. "Remington .223s. There's about fifteen of them. So there couldn't have been only one shooter." Marshal's glum voice echoed in the steel barricaded room. "We're here on the suspicion that these were the guns taken from the MCU."

Jim couldn't help but think that he was jumping to conclusions, but that did make sense. .223s were the second most common rifle caliber found in the United States, but the last person they'd caught with one was one of the Joker's goons. There had been no incidences in Gotham with these bullets - and now, all of a sudden, five people dead.

Something about the scene didn't make sense to him. All five men had been gunned down close to the door, and yet the money appeared to have been touched only by the blood that had been splattered against it. The victims appeared to have escape equipment with them: ropes, magnetized pulleys, lock clippers. They were your run-of-the-mill, fly-by-night bank robbers. The guys that robbed banks by night were usually more sophisticated then the ones who robbed during the day. During the day, robbing a bank is a smash-and-grab job: you get in, you put a gun to the teller's head, you get the money out of the drawer, and you hope to hell you get out of there before the cops show up. Cops get so bored during the day that they all respond to a bank robbery.

But the night guys? They have their tricks, their tools; they're a little older, and a lot smarter. They know how to get in and out of a building in only a few minutes, and take less money than the day guys do. Difference is, if they know what they're doing, they won't get caught, and so they can do it again, and again, and again without the cops figuring out how they've done it. Sometimes even the bank doesn't figure it out for days. They don't need guns, they don't need aggression. They have the cover of night and their wits to protect them.

"Now… they're a little young," Marshal said, pointing down to one of the young men who had his face intact. He crouched down beside the corpse and looked over him. "But he's actually a suspect we have on another heist two years ago in North Gotham. Since there's no sign of a struggle, and the victims barely made it into the vault, we have to assume that they were ambushed."

"You mean you think someone was here waiting for them?" _'Impossible'_ was the only word that came into Jim's mind. How could this be? This was one of the tightest banks in Gotham and there couldn't have been more then a few people in the city who knew how to break in, and he was sure those people were the ones lying dead on the vault floor.

"Shit, I don't know Jim. The more time I spend thinking about it the weirder it gets." Marshal seemed just as frustrated and stood from his crouched position. "In order for to make any sense the shooters would have had to know that the heist was going to take place, break in before it, lock the vault door from the _inside_, and then lie in wait for the robbers to show up and then leave without taking a dime."

"Wait…" Jim held up his hand, turning to the junior detective. "_Nothing _was stolen?"

"Not from what we can tell so far. There's about twenty-thousand dollars ruined, since, y'know, banks won't accept money with blood on it. Other than that, there doesn't look to be anything missing, but we're going to have the manager look through all the lock boxes later."

This was the second time in a row the kid had surprised him: a young cop who was used to working behind a desk and dealing with the shadier cops in interrogation was holding up well in front of a grisly murder scene. "So this wasn't a territory war between two gangs of robbers, this was an assassination?" Jim asked, but he already knew the answer.

Joe didn't even try to answer it. "CSI told me that all of those guns had samples of their striations taken, so if we can match the bullets lodged in the victims to the guns MCU had in storage, we'll know they're the same guns," he told him, holding up a casing and moving past Jim and out of the vault.

Jim thought to himself for a moment, looking over the scene before him. One of the crime scene investigators was covering up a corpse with a sheet; a second investigator taking fingerprints off another. To the commissioner it was all in vain. In the pit of his stomach, he knew the rounds would come back as a match to the stolen guns. Then he'd feel very much the same way Brutus was feeling, because when he turned back to look at the man he was standing just outside the vault, his heavy face looking outside at the group of press that swarmed around them like killer bees. He looked pensive, thoughtful, and doomed.

Jim was doomed too… and that's why he needed to figure this out and soon, before the two of them were on the chopping block.

"Ugh! I don't understand how you can drive stick!" Molly complained as the two of them wheeled through Gotham's downtown streets. "How are you supposed to smoke a cigarette or drink a latte if you're driving stick?"

Harley couldn't help but laugh, and laugh loudly. Once she had told Molly that Arkham had invited her to a black-tie event for his charity, Molly had insisted they go shopping. But, as she was making it perfectly evident, Harley was not a girly girl. She did not wear sexy clothes, she did not buy designer make-up, and she did not drive automatic. Maybe that was the funny bit.

"I dunno…" she confessed, "I used to date this guy in college who drove this custom Mustang. He taught me to drive standard and I never looked back." She chuckled and shrugged. "Besides, I don't smoke and I only drink coffee when I'm tired."

"Well whatever…" Molly groaned, looping one of her dark curls around her index finger as her body bounced slightly in the passenger seat when Harley changed gears. "Okay, let's find some place to park."  
But when Harley looked around to see where they'd stopped, she was shocked. All around them was the _crème de la crème_ of designers: Prada, Gucci, Versace, Channel… you name it. St. Clement Boulevard was Gotham's answer to New York's Fifth Avenue, though it did not draw any charity from its namesake. The street was lined with designer stores and expensive condos. Harley had looked at a couple places here when she was moving downtown, but had nearly choked on the complementary glass of champagne they'd given when she had heard the price. She moved a few blocks away, and she did not frequent the area.

Molly, on the other hand, appeared to be a local. "C'mon Harl! Stop the car! Some of these places have the most beautiful ballroom dresses on the planet."

It was clear that she was excited, but Harley was beginning to lose her patience. The last time they'd gone shopping she'd spent an entire paycheck, nearly half of it on clothes. Now she was suggesting that she buy a designer gown? "Okay, Molly, I don't know how much more money doctors make over nurses, but it's not that much!" She pulled over in exasperation to park in front of Sak's Fifth Avenue.

"Relax! Girl, geez! You think I would make you spend a fortune two months in a row?" Molly asked, with the same sense of attitude she got whenever Harley tried to accuse her of something. "You're not going to buy a dress, are you out of your damn mind? Some of these dresses will cost more than a house. You're going to _rent _it, and bring it back in mint condition. They do this kind of thing all the time. You think Angelina Jolie owns like eight million red carpet dresses?" Almost obediently, Harley shook her head. "Hell no! Girlfriend goes out and rents them like the rest of our broke asses."

Suddenly Harley was far more at ease, and there was almost something exciting about the prospect. Harley would much rather spend the money on a house then a dress, but being able to wear something designer was pretty exciting even to someone who wasn't interested in that kind of thing. "Alright… alright…" she gave up, before sliding out of her car.

Watching Molly shop was like watching a kid in a candy store. She zipped from one side of the store to the other side, pulling clothes off wracks, accepting every complimentary drink they offered her while Harley politely turned down the champagne, espresso, fresh tea with lemon and any other frou-frou nouveau riche beverage. At one point Molly leaned over and whispered, "If you're going to spend thousands of dollars here, the least they can do is offer you a glass of cheap champagne." But Harley felt bad. She didn't plan on spending thousands. She didn't know what she was looking for, but she kept on telling the professional dressers that she'd "know when she saw it."

Well, three hours later, she hadn't seen "it" yet.

"Shopping with you is a chore, not a pleasure. You've tried on what, twenty dresses tonight? You don't like any of them?" Molly was hardly one to lose her patience when it came to shopping, but it was hard to have fun when the person you were shopping with felt fat in _everything_. "You haven't even started on shoes and jewelry yet!"

Letting out a heavy sigh, Harley began to drag her feet. They'd just stopped in at a Starbucks, where Molly had picked up her usual no-fat-sugarfree-no-foam-extra-hot-double-chai-macchiato monstrosity. Harley trudged along, hoping that her coffee with cream and sugar would kick in right about now. She was exhausted, her feet were killing her, and at this point she just wanted to wear a potato sack to the damn gala. The thought of having to add shoes on top of it all made her shutter.

"Ok, one more place," Molly moaned dramatically before her begrudging counterpart exploded.

"No!" Harley called out, exasperated. "No more! I'm done! I don't know who you think you're shopping with, but I'm the girl who usually spends her money at JC Penny and I'm suddenly getting fashion advice from Anna Wintour." Taking a deep breath, Molly's look went from bitchy to soft in about three seconds. "All this stuff is so… unimportant."

With a smirk on her face Molly pointed just down the street. "There's Versace, and then there's your car. If you still feel like you'd rather buy your dress at JC Penny and look relatively unspectacular, then fine… I'll take you there myself."

"Fine," Harley said, caving under the guilt of wasting so much of Molly's time. "One more…"

"Alright!"

When the two of them stepped in, they were met with the soft sound of techno jazz and what was probably the most attractive man Harley had ever seen in her life. He had a handsome, angular, very European face, with a well-maintained Van Dyke goatee and dark hair that was tied back into a small ponytail. He wore a red silk button-down shirt that was tucked into a set of exceptionally well-tailored black pants with sparkling Italian leather shoes adorning his feet. He had the body of a ballet dancer, and when he opened his mouth to speak...

...well, her blushing face immediately went back to its muted matte peach. Harley's gaydar wasn't very good, but it was good enough.

"Good evening ladies!" he said joyously. "Welcome to Versace." Immediately she felt out of sorts. This place was where people got kicked out of if they weren't up to dress code. "Can I take your coffees from you? Maybe offer you champagne? We just got in a shipment of Cristal 2004, which was an absolutely lovely year.."

Holding up her hand, Harley was about to excuse herself when Molly piped up. "That sounds great, we'll have two."

When he leaned forward to take their coffees, from them he held his arms (and his pinkies) outstretched as if he was disgusted by the thought of commercially propagated coffee. Harley rolled her eyes and Molly nudged her with her elbow. When he returned, it was with two flutes of beautiful bubbly liquid. He handed them over with his delicate little hands, and he clapped them once before holding them to his chest. "And how can we be of service to you today?"

Molly seemed to be well versed in this, because as Harley was about to explain that she was just browsing, the brazen young woman chimed in yet again. "My friend here's been invited to a black-tie gala by her boss, and she needs to be the belle of the ball," Molly said in a refined tone that did not resemble her usual one.

"As well she should!" Harley had never used the word _fabulous _before, but she could have used it now. "Us girls would do anything to impress a cute boss, huh?" he asked, and winked as the two of them nearly heaved into their champagne.

"No!" Harley blurted out to correct him. "Oh, no-no...no, my boss is a hundred thousand years old. I'm a doctor, I'm trying to make tenure."

Her realism must have brought him off of whatever cloud he was floating on and back down to earth, because he actually started talking like a stylist. "Oh, so you're going to want something professional, something sleek and elegant?"

"Sleek and elegant, yes; professional, no," Molly told him, taking a sip from her champagne. "I've taken this little girl here to all the stores on this strip, and she's pulled the most boring pieces to wear. We're going to jazz it up and make her a little uncomfortable."

He listened to her with one arm tucked under the opposite elbow, and the hand attached to that elbow propping up his pointy chin in the most dignified way imaginable. Turning on his heels, he looked Harley over and suddenly she felt very self-conscious. "You? Miss Skinny-Miney? You probably hit the gym three times a week. I know your type." He pointed at her with a long, spindly finger and nodded.

Harley blushed again and their stylist squealed in delight. "Ugh! Look at you! You're just the cutest little thing." Shaking his head, he tried to get a better look at her. After a few seconds, he grew exasperated and motioned for her to hand him the champagne glass, which he immediately passed off to Molly. "Okay, give me that suit jacket of yours. And never, ever put it on again."

Shocked, Harley slowly moved to pull herself out of her gray blazer, but before she had the chance he'd scooped it up by it's lapel and pulled it off her shoulders as he stepped behind her. For a split second, Harley caught herself imagining that, if had he wanted to, he would probably be able to undress a woman awfully quickly. Once he held her blazer he gave an overdramatic gasp. "What on Earth is wrong with you child?" he asked, and then placed an apologetic hand on her shoulder.

Turning to look at herself in a mirror, she shrugged. Harley saw herself naked every day, and she didn't think there was anything spectacular about the way she looked. She was fit, yeah... but curvy. She had the tiniest bit of jiggle, but she never considered herself attractive. She knew men were dogs, and would knock down their mothers to get in front of a good looking girl. They never did that at the sight of her... at least she didn't think so.

Clearly unwilling to trust a word that fell from Harley's mouth, the man turned back to Molly. "Exactly how long has your friend been hiding this silhouette in frumpy clothing?" he asked, flabbergasted.

Without any sort of hesitation, Molly waved him off. "Forever. Though I got her to wear a cinched-waist blouse and a pencil skirt once. And she just went back to the some old wardrobe malfunction the very next day."

"Hey!" Harley tried to argue, but it fell on deaf ears.

Brushing imaginary sweat from his well manicured brow, the stylist sighed and took hold of Harley by the shoulders, turning her to look at herself in the mirror once more. "Lookit-lookit-lookit" he said, so quickly that it sounded like one long word. "What is this? A size four?" He put his hands on her waist. "And what about this? Hmm? Like a thirty-six?" Harley turned at the waist to look back at him, horrified to see Molly stifling a giggle.

"Madness!" he called out and then took Harley by the hand. "Come with me." While he dragged her behind, Molly just shook her head back and forth, a devilish grin on her face.

It had nearly been nine o'clock when they sauntered in, but for the next hour, the stylist (who had eventually decided to formally introduce himself as Georg) got a closer look at Harley's body then most straight men had since her junior year in college. He took measurements, looked at the sizes in her clothes, calculated the number of champagne flutes she had emptied, and seemed to pour it all into a mathematical equation. The answer emerged was supposed to be the perfect dress... but when he brought it out, Harley was horrified.

"R...red?" she asked as he pulled it from a large garment box.

"Are you kidding?" he asked, in such shock that his jaw might have fallen off had it not been so securely attached. "With your dark hair and your ivory complexion? Oh...Emm...Gee... who couldn't look at you?"

As unsure as she was, she wasn't going to let poor Georg's hard work go to waste and so she humored him and tried it on. There were no mirrors in the dressing room until one was presented to you, and when Harley stepped up on a platform and Georg threw open that folded mirror, she didn't speak. Maybe the surprise factor had something to do with it, and maybe it was the look on Molly's face, but regardless of the color, she loved it.

A delicate bow started at the hip, wrapped around the side and down the back; it had a bit of a train, but the main focal point of the dress was what wasn't there. Her entire back was exposed. Her delicate neck, all the way down to the last vertebra of her spine. It was incredibly feminine, very sexy, probably the most expensive thing Harley would ever wear... and she had to have it.

"How much?" she asked in a flat tone as she turned to gaze at her naked back in the mirror.

"This one? $23,000."

It was a good thing she hadn't been wearing a pair of those towering overpriced high heels in the display window, because she may well have fallen over. She looked at him, stunned. "Twa... twenty..."

"Twenty-three thousand, that's right."

Molly's grip on the two champagne flutes made it seem as though they both my shatter at any moment. "But! If I can say. I've only seen this dress look good on two people...you, and the model who took it down the runway in Milan."

Blushing, she turned to look back in the mirror and sighed. "And..." he started and when she turned back to look at him, he smiled. "I _can_ rent it to you."

Harley squealed in pleasure and stepped down from the pedestal to hug him. "Really, would you?"

Seeming all too pleased to hug her back, Georg laughed at her. "Of course, Darling! How could I not? That dress was made for you!" he said, and when she stepped up onto the platform to view it one last time she spun on the tips of her toes, the train splaying out behind her.

Taking a deep breath, Harley grinned that enormous grin of hers and sighed. "Fabulous."


	12. Chapter 12: Nostalgia

There was something Bruce Wayne loved about these events. More often than not, people like him didn't simply get to attend functions like this one without people becoming curious or suspicious as to their motives. For the sake of his public image (as well as his not-so-public image), sometimes he attended the functions required of him. Although it usually took a final shove out the door from Alfred, once he'd gotten his feet wet, he noticed the water was just fine.

The Arkham Community Charity Benefit, which helped fund treatment and research for mental illness, was one of Gotham's glitzier events. Made sense to Bruce, seeing as how Gotham's crazy-to-sane ratio seemed dangerously disproportionate. As he stepped out of his limousine and out into the cool, but still temperate mid autumn air, he found teams of journalists surrounding the entrance. They seemed to explode in a feverish fanfare when Wayne emerged, bringing with him two of the most beautiful women that he would allow to cling to him for the majority of the night. Bulbs went off, journalists shot questions from every angle, and while the girls posed like the models they wished they were, Bruce simply wore his signature coy smile.

Most of the journalists hollered questions about his personal life, others about his business. Striding past them with the two women on his arms, he didn't say a single word, but only smiled and chuckled idly with the girls as he stepped into the Vauxhall Opera Staff & Indoor Concert Center: Gotham's most prestigious venue, a place that Bruce had been in hundreds of times... though none of them particularly memorable.

Every step was a challenge. Every step was met with another question. Every step was judged and scrutinized by the Gotham elite. It took all the energy he had to continue the mantra in his head.

_Bruce Wayne isn't the real me anymore... Batman is._

Some of the people here had known his parents. Most of the people here had been kicked out of his mansion by himself personally, prior to his final battle with Ra's al Ghul. All of them thought he was just some rich kid who had managed to get his hands on daddy's wallet.

He didn't care. This was a mask. One he wore with as much style and elegance as he could muster.

"Ah, Mr. Wayne!" came the high pitched sing-song voice of Dr. Jeremiah Arkham, and Bruce immediately rolled his eyes. "Oh, I see you've brought yourself something to play with while all the boring old men are talking." His tone was all condescending mockery, but he smiled kindly at the girls.

It was strange to see Arkham this way. It was strange to see him in anything other then a lab coat, really. Smiling politely at the women Bruce had brought with him, the doctor went on. "I'm sure your lovely lady friends would love to take advantage of the open bar we have available."

That was all the convincing the women needed, and without a moment of hesitation, the two took each other's hands and skipped merrily across the vast lobby area and toward the bar. Bruce stuffed his hands into his pockets and turned back to the elderly doctor. "Surprised I managed to show, Dr. Arkham?" he asked, with that same half smile of his.

"Oh yes, entirely surprised, since I don't think you've come to a single event since your inception onto the board to directors at Arkham Asylum." Bruce had played a very minor philanthropic role on the board, but Jeremiah loved publicizing the fact that Bruce Wayne was a member. Very few people got warm and fuzzy over Bruce's presence, but probably moreso then they did over the rest of the board.

Bruce cracked a larger smile with a casual laugh. "Too true, Dr. Arkham. Been suffering from a case of cabin fever the last few months, decided a family-friendly outing would be a good idea." Glancing over to the two women who were at the bar, already performing their finest gold-digging routine on one of the much, much older doctors who sat on the board.

"Yes..." Jeremiah seemed to trail off sightly as he watched them, before quickly turning his head back to Wayne. "I'm not about to analyze exactly what it is that you consider _wholesome entertainment._.. otherwise I'd have to charge you a fee, I think." Bruce lifted a brow at that, maintaining his smile as Dr. Arkham placed a hand on his shoulder. "Do behave yourself," he said, rather sharply, before moving off to greet someone else.

While putting up appearances, keeping up with the Jones' and all that, was one of his greatest skills, it was also one of his greatest annoyances. With a heavy sigh, he glanced around the room. Despite all the people here, none of them had faces. Hundreds upon hundreds of people, who pooled no more than a couple percent of their annual earnings to give away, and then patted themselves on the back for a job well done...the term 'giving back' meant nothing to them especially when compared to himself

Luckily, Bruce had learned how to tune out the majority of these events. Short of slumping in his chair, he managed to feign interest for at least a couple of hours. The crowd of people slowly gathered around a multitude of large round tables, which in turn were arranged around a large stage. Those who had helped to fund the organization over the last year were explaining the kind of ground breaking research that... blah, blah, blah...

Resting his chin on the palm of his hand, his eyes scanned the crowd - and then caught someone. In fact, the eyes that glanced back caught him as well.

She sat about thirty feet away her posture exhibiting the same lack of enthusiasm as his, but when she acknowledged his eye contact she sat up in an attempt to look professional. Bruce couldn't help but shoot her an amused smile, which she reciprocated. Glancing away, he picked up a glass of champagne, and took a sip of it while getting a bit of a closer look.

Pretty girl; maybe around thirty or so. Her dark brown hair was curled and done up elegantly. She wore a designer, wine-red colored dress and large solitaire diamond earrings... and even from this distance there was something familiar about her face. He had torn his eyes away for a moment, and when Bruce turned to glance again she was looking at him in much the same way. After a moment she gave him a fabulous smile and tilted her head in the direction of the bar. They both stood simultaneously, and when Bruce's young posse moved to follow he settled them back into their seats. "I won't be more than a minute." he whispered...he lied.

Bruce felt terrible. Clearly she had recognized him before he had the chance to remember her face. He was hoping that as he came closer the memory of her would come flooding back. When he had finally cleared the sea of round tables, she was spinning a straw in a drink while leaning against the bar. As he came closer, there was a sense of relief that came over him.

"Well I'll be: Harley Quinzel," he said, with a far more genuine smile then he had offered anyone else that night. "I haven't seen you since..."

"The last year of our B.A.," she finished his sentence and grinned. "You went off to business school at Princeton and I went off to psychology at Gotham Graduate School."

Raising his brows and feigning surprise, he leaned back on his heels. "Oh! You're here for work? You mean you don't come to these things for the social benefits?" he asked, poking fun at her. In her younger years Harley had been known for good grades, but there had been a rumor that they had dropped off as she earned her doctorate. No one was quite sure how she passed, but Bruce had determined that, clearly, she had accomplished her dream of becoming a psychiatrist. No one came to these things unless it was a requirement.

"We can't all be thrillseekers like you. While I was sitting on my finals and taking my oath you were, what? Base jumping off some alpine slope?" she jabbed right back.

He had been just an angry young man when she knew him, bitter over losing his parents so long ago, and she had done her best to console him and his confused feelings. She hadn't been a therapist back then, but Bruce always thought she was heading up just the right alley.

"Me, thrillseeking? Not anymore..." _No, now I just base-jump off of skyscrapers without a parachute._ He smiled to disguise his thought. For some reason he didn't entirely understand, he was shocked at how happy he was to see a familiar face. "I'm not above playing hookey from a boring charity event, though."

She chuckled and shrugged. "Aren't you on the board of directors for Arkham Asylum?"

"If I was really on the board, then I would have made sure we had spent the money on a decent catering company." Shaking his head, he rolled his eyes and thumbed to the stage behind him. "Arkham keeps me on the board for reasons of status only."

"Ahh...yes, I know what that's like. Arkham seems to need as much attention as the patients, if not more." She placed her drink back on the bar. "So what you're saying is that you don't _need_ to be here. God knows why you came in the first place." Her tone was disenchanted, but nonetheless, she seemed happy to see him.

"Yeah, you kind of stick out from the rest of them. You uh... interning at Arkham?"

Nodding slowly, she looked over to Dr. Arkham who was speaking on stage, "Yeah, I guess I stand out a little bit... and by a little bit, I mean that I'm pretty sure I had grandparents that died younger than some of these guys." Most of the doctors at Arkham were not the most friendly, caring therapists, but they were the most respected - and certainly the most aged. "I haven't really decided on where I'll be permanently, but right now I'm about halfway through a two year internship."

"So I suppose you could say you achieved your dream?" He shrugged his confusion, squinting. "I gotta say Harley, didn't think you'd be treating the lowest of the low of Gotham's insane. You're actually working at Arkham Asylum, not one of the other facilities for the less wicked?" Jeremiah Arkham was perhaps exclusively responsible for all of the mentally ill people in Gotham. He presided over many facilities, everything from minimum security homes for the mentally deranged to fortresses like the Asylum.

Harley scoffed. "But of course I work at Arkham. Did you expect me to take on any less of a challenge?"

"Well..." Bruce smiled devilishly. "You _were_ friends with me during college. I suppose it could be said that you like a challenge."

"I most certainly do," Harley said without hesitation.

There was a moment of awkward silence in-between them. Bruce had vanished halfway through business school in order to, well... re-directionalize his life. Everyone thought he'd died, and no doubt, if she had heard about his disappearance she would have thought the same. He thought it best not to mention it.

"It was good seeing you again. I didn't want to keep you too long, but I did feel the need to say hello." She reached out and rubbed his arm. "Hardly recognized you."

"If it makes you feel any better, I didn't recognize you at all until I was about ten feet away." A subtle trace of guilt lingered in his tone.

"You didn't? Then why did you come over?"

"Beautiful woman in a red dress, how could I not?" he teased.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes, then turned around to reveal the significant absence of fabric on her back. "It's the dress...my _bosses_ didn't even recognize me. You don't actually think I have something like this hanging in my closet now do you? It's on loan from Versace. I'm supposed to be representing the company, but they told me to wear something designer." Clearly disappointed with the image she was reflecting, she sighed. "If they wanted me to adequately represent Arkham with fashion, I should have worn my lab coat and put shackles around my ankles. Not to mention I'm five-foot-three and I'm nearly as tall as you are in these shoes."

"Uncomfortable?" he asked sympathetically.

"Why do you think I'm leaning up against this bar?"

The two of them shared a laugh, after which Harley motioned back to his seat where the two girls were waiting. "I shouldn't keep you. I did just want to say hi."

Bruce glanced over at them, but didn't appear very concerned when he turned back to look at Harley. "Them? Oh... trust me, I'm sure they can entertain themselves. I'm not very worried."  
"Mmm..." She hummed her disapproval. "Doesn't seem like a very gentlemanly thing to do now does it?"

Bruce knew that, for the most part, Harley was teasing him. Considering her occupation, it wouldn't be very difficult for her to see that they were ornaments on top of the Bruce Wayne facade.

"Do you need to stick around... for work that is?" Bruce's face had that youthful, hopeful glow about it, brows arched high up on his forehead.

A small smile crept up onto Harley's face. "Well...I suppose I _should_ stay, but if anyone asks why I left, I could say that I had a bad reaction to the lobster bisque."

"I'm sure they'd believe you. I think _I'm having_ a bad reaction to the lobster bisque." They shared another laugh, and along with it a tiny sigh of relief. For a split second Bruce reflected on how terrible it felt to hold back on every little piece of happiness. "C'mon...it actually still feels like summer outside, so let's go for a walk. After this I could really use a cup of coffee to wake myself up."

That small smile of hers spread and she nodded. "Alright. Though, you think I'm a little overdressed?"

He chuckled again, shrugging. "Hey, as long at you can walk in those shoes, I'm sure you'll be just fine."

"Heh, yeah well we'll see about that."

# # # # #

Forty-five minutes and two lattes later, Bruce was sitting on a bench in Robinson Park. Harley was now barefoot, walking along the rounded edge of one of the many fountains that filled the place - her shoes in one hand, the hem of her dress and her coffee in the other, her arms held out to her side to keep herself balanced.

"I don't know if that's the best idea," he said to her casually, chuckling as he spoke.

"Pssh! Are you kidding? This is literally _and figuratively_ a walk in the park," she said, balancing herself as she hovered over the shallow pool of clean water. Bruce had to admire that she could be so carefree in a dangerous position while wearing such an expensive article of clothing. Either that, or she hadn't considered the dress in her endeavor. "I used to do flips along balance beams half this width in high school."

He tried to imagine it, but Bruce hadn't known her back then. "Even I wouldn't want to part with the kind of coin required to buy that dress," he teased idly, pulling himself up off the bench.  
Harley waved him off and continued to at a slow pace around the edge of the fountain as he moved in step beside her. "Aren't you impressed? I thought I'd live a little dangerously. Potentially ruining a twenty-three thousand dollar dress seem dangerous enough for you?"

"Twenty-three thousand for a dress!" Even by Bruce's standards that was a little high. His question startled her so much she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder to steady herself. She shot him a glare, which he deflected with another coy smile. "Sorry..."

"Like you haven't spent more money on something frivolous before? Besides, it's on loan...and hey! Didn't you used to drive a quarter-million-dollar sports car when you were in college?" she asked, steadying herself and continuing to walk.

"Heh, yeah..." Bruce remembered it fondly. "The old silver McLaren F1. I remember that car."

"I have nightmares about that car! It was the loudest piece of machinery on the planet. I always used to remember when you were in the sorority parking lot. That thing roared like a lion." As much as she complained, he remembered her saying that she used to love the way the G-force would push her back in the seat when he hit the gas and changed gears. He'd only take her for a ride a couple times, mostly just to and from class. She wore more make-up back then, and had blond hair.

His face took on a bit of a somber look as she continued to walk around the fountain. His eyes went out of focus before he took a deep breath.

"I used to drive around with Rachel in that car," he whispered.

Both of them stopped in their tracks. Standing a good foot above Bruce's head, Harley turned and looked down at him. "Yeah... I heard about that."

Her soft and sympathetic tone told him she wasn't talking about the countless hours they had spent riding around in a car. Her lips twisted in disappointment, and placing her hand back upon his shoulder, she sighed. In the pit of his stomach, Bruce wished she hadn't. The soft gust of breath brought back memories in a whirlwind, and although his eyes dampened, nothing about them expressed the sadness that she might have been expecting. He had spoken to Alfred briefly after it had happened. Her death had fueled his rage against the Joker, but other than that... he'd had no outlet. How could he? Everyone he cared about seemed to be gone already.

Shaking his head, he glanced back up at her. "I'm sure you'll understand if I don't want to talk about it just yet."

She patted his shoulder once more with an understanding nod. "Well, as soon as you're ready, you'll know who to come to. I won't even put you on the clock," she teased. When he managed to crack a smile, one of those turquoise jewels that decorated her face winked at him. "Good."

"Seems like your line of work is more interesting than mine, anyway," Bruce said. Harley seemed overly cheerful for someone who treated psychotic killers every day. "I'm amazed that you're not more stressed out."

She put one foot directly in front of the other, shrugging nonchalantly. "I'm an intern on a special project. If I had more than one case, maybe I'd have something to be stressed out about."

Given the roll of her eyes when she said that, she didn't seem very impressed with her occupational predicament. Usually Harley wasn't one to be so vague. For someone who got paid to listen, it was easy for her mouth to run away from her... which was why Bruce found it so strange that the one thing that she had worked toward for so long was not a topic for conversation.

Feigning a piqued interest, he continued to stroll around the fountain with her. "Special project, huh?"

She glanced over to him and nodded once, before turning her eyes back down to the ledge in front of her. "Yeah, you know...I'm pretty shocked. The case I'm on would garner a lot of attention if Arkham had actually told the media about it. Amazingly enough, he hasn't told a living soul... probably because I'm way too junior to be working on the case... but hey, if the shoe fits. I'm sure the cat'll be out of the bag soon enough"

Okay, now he genuinely _was_ interested, and a part of his heart strained to beat. "Not allowed to talk about it?" he asked, wondering if there was any possible way that she would trust him enough in order to slick his curiosity. There were plenty of criminals filling the rooms in Arkham... but if he could get Harley to trust him, she might unknowingly help him determine a future threat. He wondered for a moment why he was so interested, and he wondered still why he thought Harley was dumb enough to fall for it.

"Well, I'm sure Dr. Arkham wouldn't appreciate it..." She gave a far less enthusiastic shrug then the one she had given a moment ago. "But it all comes down to what I'm going to do once the internship is up. Ultimately the decision is up to Jeremiah Arkham and the Joker himself..."

Bruce knew that she had continued saying something - but her words seemed to fade into a blurry mess of sound. Taking one last step, he suddenly felt frozen in stone, like one of the angels that decorated the large marble basin in front of them.

"You're treating the Joker?" he managed to ask, finally.

Harley had taken a couple more steps but turned to glance back at him, an indifferent look upon her face. "Yeah... I thought you knew. I kind of thought you were testing me right then."

Furrowing her brows, Harley's face grew worried, as if she said something she shouldn't have. "Aren't you acting on the board of directors? Weren't you informed of the fact Arkham had an intern treating the Joker?" She hopped off the fountain, the strain in her face still apparent. "He told me before I started that he was going to bring the notion to the board before he let me commence."

_What_ was Arkham _thinking_? He stood still, fixed in a state of mild shock. How could that old man get so desperate to get the Joker to talk that he was sick enough to feed her to the hounds like that?

"Harley... what were you _thinking_? What in your right mind would make you think that you could treat the _Joker_?"

Her face fell to a serious, offended look. She smoothed out her dress and slid herself back into her heels, standing up to a slightly more refined height in her towering shoes, crossing her arms over her chest. "Do you not think I'm good enough to?"

Bruce's hardened stance broke and he moved toward her. "No... it's that you're too good." He wanted so badly to reach out and take her by the shoulders and shake her, but he couldn't.

That only seemed to offend her further. "What do you mean, 'too good'?"

Heaving a sigh of his own, he tried to explain. "I mean..." There was a long pause. He had to chose his words carefully. He knew Bruce Wayne could only know what the newspapers told him, and nowhere near as much as Batman knew. "The Joker tried to kill hundreds of people. Men like that manipulate people to get what they want... and they don't care who they hurt."

Raising a brow, she let her arms drop to her sides. "I've got news for you, Bruce... most men are like that. I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself." There was a moment where she glanced down at her feet, that odd little twisted smile and telltale blush.

Deep in the pit of who he was, Batman admired her for refusing to back down. As unassuming as she had been in university, somewhere along the way Harley had come in to a sense of courage that... well, even Bruce had to admit was kind of sexy in that untouchable sort of way.

"Besides, I've made waves in the psychiatric community for my work. Forty-five therapists, and the Joker will only talk to _me_." There was a sense of pride in her face that bordered on smug. "My fear is that Arkham is only interested in the press that comes along with housing the Joker, and once he's permanently situated at the asylum then there won't be a need to treat him anymore."

He furrowed his heavy brows with a suspicious glance. Her concern spoke volumes more then she might have expected it to. "What do you mean 'your fear'...you _want_ to do this?" Perhaps there was more to this than just ego. He was sure that any therapist would give their right eye to try to treat the Joker, but he assumed it would be more of a test of skill than actual sympathy for their patient. She was suggesting a _requirement_ to treat. "Arkham probably realizes that it's useless to treat him."

Harley's face hardened once more. "So just toss him in Blackgate and throw away the key? Is that it?"

"That's certainly one thing you could do with him."

Had Harley not been wearing those shoes she might have been less intimidating, but when she marched up to him in those towering sandals, she pretty much looked him in the eye. "Bruce..." she whispered in a sinister tone. "You are on the board of this facility, and you are expected to have sympathy for the mentally ill."

With his dark eyes widened in surprised, his neck lurched forward, shocked by her compassion. "Harley..." he started, his voice hardly above her own whisper. "The man tried to kill seven hundred people, on ferries, in the middle of the Gotham River. He tired to assassinate the Mayor. He blew up a _hospital_." Shaking his head, he once again fought the urge to reach out and shake her. "You can not have sympathy for this man..."

Her eyes pierced back into his, her tone infallibly firm, striking him like a freight train. "Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz; these men shaped the country and the law with the incomprehensible terror of their crimes. The Joker is no different. I believe that he is mentally ill, and _should_ be treated. I'm treating him as I would treat you, if you were the one who was sick."

"I didn't kill fifteen people."

They stood there for a moment, and in that moment Bruce fought with what to say. He could either condemn her work, or he could try to protect his friend. The thought struck him as strange. He hadn't seen Harley for nearly eight years, and suddenly she was his friend? Suddenly she was enough of a fixture for him to worry about? "What will the people of Gotham think when they learn that one of the highest achievers in the city turns out to be in the Joker's corner?"

"I'm not the only one clinging to the Joker," she whispered, and her words hit him like a brick wall. "Gotham _needs_ crime. The press, the people... they soak it up like a sponge. And if they didn't, then you could lock him up in Blackgate and no one would ever know the difference. The world needs chaos, they _must_ have it. If they didn't, then men like the Joker wouldn't exist, and the people of Gotham wouldn't question where they stand on the scales of good and evil."

Her expression softened and she pulled away from him to toss her coffee into a nearby garbage can. "I don't stand on either side. I stand in the middle, hoping to make sense of both...it's a very lonely place to be, to have everyone shrieking at you for answers when you have none..."

Turning, she glanced at him over her shoulder. "I'm tired... are you going to walk me home?" she asked with that earlier air of nonchalance, her eyelids appearing heavy in the continuously dimming sunlight.

_I stand in the middle, hoping to make sense of both. _Those words would haunt him as they walked in silence together to Harley's condo. Bruce wondered how she could stand so far away from his mind, and yet somehow stand right next to his spirit.


	13. Chapter 13: Ask

This was the latest she'd ever been for a session with the Joker.

Harley was a stickler for punctuality. She hated being late, she hated people who were late, she hated the idea of lateness altogether, and she knew that she'd better have a good excuse for it. There was only the odd occasion that she was tardy, and today she was running about ten minutes behind schedule. She imagined the Joker tapping his impatient foot, thick arms crossed over his chest, and the image made her cringe. He would tease her and abrade her, and she'd beg for his forgiveness, and he'd love every minute of her haphazard groveling.

Harley smiled; the more she thought about it, the funnier it became.

The hurried clicking of her heels was becoming a common indicator of her approach these days, and she usually took notice of the commanding sound. But today, she was internally scorning the chatty nurse on the first floor, who'd felt the need to tell her about a patient who'd tried to swallow his tongue over the weekend. Harley had been too polite to shoo her off, and the entire time the woman was talking she marveled at a topic that, in the real world, would not suffice for appropriate conversation.

_Just couldn't shut her up... I guess I'm supposed to be approachable, but this is ridiculous! _she'd repeated over and over again in her mind, hoping it would convince the Joker of her frustration. But during her zombified mantra, she hadn't noticed the absence of the ever-present guard outside the interrogation room. It was, however, hard to ignore the fact that Jeremiah Arkham was nowhere to be found inside the observation room. Mouth agape, her eyes flicked up to the one way mirror, and found the the interrogation room was empty.

Turning around on a dime, Harley ran back in the direction she'd come from, at twice the speed as she'd spent on getting there. The ascent to the seventh floor in the nearly fifty-year-old elevator was only a passing thought in her mind. She pushed the heavy iron door to the stairwell with such force that it slammed against the cinder block wall. Mounting stairs two at a time, she weaved her way from where they normally met on the third floor and up to the seventh, as quickly as she could without letting her shoes come up from underneath her.

Careening from the stairwell and down the hall, Harley heard something up ahead, straining to listen it over her beating heart. She did not slow herself down to turn the corner, but instead flattened out her feet and drifted on the tips of her toes, her knee length lab coat fluttering and swirling behind her.

The scene at the end of the hall was a catalyst for her growing anger. The Joker sat at by the emergency exit adjacent to his room, bound in a straitjacket, watching her intently as her feet skidded across the floor.

Walking briskly, though as calmly as she could to mask her anxiety, Harley made her way to the end of the hall and glanced at both of the guards before turning to see the disturbance in the Joker's cell. Dr. Arkham was just in the process of lifting the mattress on the twin bed that was pushed up against the left side of the room. "Aha!" he called out triumphantly, and seemed to pick something up that had been carefully hidden out of sight on the box-spring.

"_Aha_, he says," Harley said mockingly, turning to look back at the Joker who snorted in amusement from his position on the floor.

"Dr. Quinzel! You have impeccable timing," he congratulated her - begrudgingly - and then peered back over to the Joker. Arkham's sudden appearance in front of her made her jump when she turned back around.

"Random room checks, Doctor?" she asked, leaning away from him when she noticed how close he was to her.

Arkham stepped right past her and toward the restrained man, gesturing to him with the a manila file folder in his hands. "Oh, how I wish it was that simple. No, I'm responding to an observation made by an orderly, who said he'd seen _your _patient with contraband." Arkham handed Harley the file he'd rolled up, and she peered inside at its contents.

Lifting a skeptical brow, she looked up to Arkham and then down to the file once again. "Firstly, Dr. Arkham...as you've pointed out time and time again, you're actually the primary therapist on the Joker's case. Technically he's _your_ patient." She paused and when she looked up to see his reaction, he had his back to her, his posture hunching in defeat. "Secondly, this is hardly contraband... these are newspaper clippings. Prisoners of penitentiaries and private mental facilities have the right to reading material if they want it."

Arkham was swift to correct her, tapping repeatedly on the file she held in her hands. "Wrong, Dr. Quinzel, patients are allowed reading material with their _therapist _present. Am I to be under the impression that you gave these to him?"

_What a raving lunatic._ "How could I have possibly given them to him? You've been observing every session I've had with the Joker so far, and in fact you've remarked on my progress."

There was no arguing with her. At the end of nearly every session, Arkham _had _patted her on the shoulder and told her she'd done a fabulous job. Hell, he'd even invited her to his fundraising gala because of the "breakthroughs" with the Joker. Turning to look over his shoulder, he took a deep breath before exhaling into a heavy sigh.

"Now, I cannot be held accountable for isolated incidents," Harley went on, holding up the file as the incident in question.

"It's not the articles I'm concerned about," Arkham said. "It's the content."

Furrowing her brows, Harley flipped the file open again and considered them for a moment. Indeed, the content was concerning. The clippings were from a copy of last week's _Gotham Times_ about the very fundraiser that Arkham had invited her to. In the photographs were the tuxedo-clad members of the board, all of them standing (without walkers, amazingly) and smiling into the camera.

But just off to the right, and only slightly in the background was Harley herself, her back to the lens, peering over her shoulder. She remembered being surprised by the flash and looking over, only to feel like a fool upon realizing what had just happened.

The second article was a little more disturbing. Harley hadn't seen it, since she didn't usually read 'Page Six' material, but it seemed as though a wily photographer managed to catch a snap shot of Bruce Wayne - holding the door of his Aston Martin open for her as they left the party together.

Harley couldn't help but smile to herself, while in the meantime Arkham turned back to the Joker to lecture him about the meaning of the term "contraband", when suddenly he asked, "What exactly were you doing with these articles? Collecting information on this facility?"

The Joker rolled his eyes. "Actually, I'm taking a scrapbooking class at the Arkham Learning Annex for Wayward Crazies."

Harley pressed her fingers to her lips to stifle a laugh. When Dr. Arkham turned to shoot her a venomous glare, she moved her fingers down to her chin and gave the Joker a contemplative glance, nodding thoughtfully as if she didn't find him the last bit amusing. Her little act seemed to please the Joker, because he smiled at her before he glanced up to the old doctor.

Just before he burst into another tirade, Harley reached out and placed a calming hand on his shoulder. "Dr. Arkham, please...let me deal with him. We've been gaining leaps and bounds so far. I wouldn't want this little episode to cause a lack of trust to develop here." She then tapped him on the shoulder with the confiscated file. "Besides! These articles have nothing but good things in them. Nothing but wonderful things written about your fund. I'm sure if the Joker was trying to find something to manipulate you with, he wouldn't be able to find it in here."

Drawing in another deep breath, Arkham straightened his suit jacket under his stark white lab coat and nodded curtly. "Yes, my dear." Harley could feel the bile rise in her throat at those words. "I suppose you're right. I have nothing to hide," he said, looking down his nose as the Joker, whose twisted lips and hanging head seemed to admit his defeat to the doctor. "So long as he promises not to do it again."

Harley's blue eyes snapped over to the Joker, who was plainly a little shocked at the suggestion. The old man clearly had a lot of balls if he was going to request an apology from the Joker. Taking a half a step behind Dr. Arkham, Harley clasped her hands together and immediately painted a pleading expression on her face.

He scoffed heavily, rolled his eyes, and muttered in the quietest voice, "Yeah...sure. No more scrapbooking."

Arkham's old wrinkled face seemed to morph in an instant, into a pleased, almost beaming version of itself. He turned and immediately took Harley's hand, shaking it vigorously. "I must say, Dr. Quinzel. Only a few weeks and you've managed to free him of his pride! Simply remarkable!"

Harley's smile was very forced, and a quick gaze at the Joker's displeased and twisted face told her that the happiness was short lived...that is, until Arkham said: "You know, Kleinburg told me last week that I should just leave you be with the Joker, and I think he might be right."

How Harley had managed to turn this situation on its head and end up appeasing the old man was beyond her. Arkham's constant presence had led to conversations more tame than what she knew the Joker was capable of. He'd been holding back, and now...now he wouldn't _have _to anymore. Another quick glance at him verified that the tension was now all but gone. She allowed herself a relieved sigh. "Oh, thank you, Dr Arkham!" she exclaimed, shaking his hand just as ardently.

He released her, but jabbed a finger at her just as suddenly. "But I must be kept in the loop. I want weekly reports, and I'll be sitting in randomly to see how things are going."

She didn't care. Arkham could have filled the observation room with the entire Wringling Brothers' circus and it wouldn't have made a lick of difference to her. "Of course, sir. Whatever you'd like."

Arkham nodded to both the guards, who relaxed their stances and stepped away from the Joker. "I trust that you'll be able to take care of him, then," he said, motioning for the guards to follow him. Smiling devilishly, he quipped one last time, "Good Luck, Dr. Quinzel," before his brutish posse walked down the hall.

She _had_ been about to ask for help in getting the Joker back into his cell, but bit it back after his remark. Indeed, she would take care of him...no thanks to Dr. Arkham and his parade of wannabe watchdogs.

They both watched as the three men turned the corner toward the elevator, and once they were gone, Harley turned to kneel down in front of him. "Thank you, thank you, _thank you_! You have no idea how much that meant!"

The Joker rolled his eyes again and bobbed his head from side to side. "No where near as embarrassing as being tied up in this thing," he said, squirming ever so slightly.

"I don't know..." she mentioned coyly, grinning as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Kind of a good look for you. Besides, you have nowhere to run when I start asking you questions about why you have pictures of me hiding in your cell."

"Oh, I can still run," he said, looking toward his ankles.

Although they were shackled, Harley didn't doubt him at all. "I was going to get those guards to help me pull you up off the floor, but my pride got the better of me when Arkham wished me good luck."

"Pride! That's the word of the day!" he teased her with an acidic tone.

"Sure does seem that way." Harley sighed, looking over him "You sure are pitiful in that thing though." Straitjackets were never very becoming on anyone, and something about cutting off the Joker's means of theatrical communication seemed cruel and unusual to Harley. "Come on..." she said, wrapping both her arms around one of his. "Lean up against the wall and I'll help you slide up to your feet."

He did as she asked. Harley could hear the metal fasteners grind and scratch against the wall, and once he was up on his feet she dusted off his shoulders and his back. "Was the straitjacket really necessary?" she wondered. It wasn't too far outside of reality to assume that the Joker was being aggressive, and it was usually common practice to restrain violent offenders in such a way, but the question was just non-intrusive enough to get some response out of him.

"I was sleeping, they woke me up, turned me over before I knew what was happening and put me in this thing." He shrugged. Whether or not it was true didn't really matter to her, but it didn't exactly sound like something the Joker would lie about. Besides, if there had been any kind of violent behavior from him, Arkham would have had guards, orderlies, and medication up here in seconds.

Once inside his cell, Harley turned and closed the door, which locked automatically with a loud click that echoed through the small room. It looked just like all the others: taupe walls, a twin bed, bolted down aluminum table and chair. Everything standard issue, the same in every single room. By the door was a small, card-activated keypad mounted on the wall. It came with a locked plastic covering that Harley had a small key for. With a fluid swipe of her card, she dimmed the lights in the room to just a few shades lower then the blaring neon they usually were.

"A little bit of mood lighting, Doc?" the Joker asked over his shoulder.

She snorted in amusement and grinned, unfastening the buckles of his jacket. "Are you kidding, Joker? You wouldn't know what to do with me." Her tone was a little lighter than it usually was. It was such a relief to know that the old man didn't have his ear pressed up against the door. She was sure that acting herself around the Joker would cause him to open up further still. The thought thrilled her more than she'd expected it to.

"Now..." she began again, her hand on the final buckle - a crotch strap that prodded dangerous territory. She placed her hand on the buckle and tugged it just enough to get his attention. "You're not gonna give me a hard time for the whole '_apologizing-to-Arkham_' thing, are you?"

"Is it Dr. Quinzel, or Dom. Quinzel? I think I might have misread your business card," he quipped, as she unfastened the last strap and helped him pull the jacket up over his head.

"It's Harley." she said. He nodded his understanding and collapsed width-wise on his bed, his head and shoulders pressed against the concrete wall.

"So, what was that all about, eh?" she asked, watching him fiddle with a hangnail. She sat sideways in the aluminum chair and draped her forearm over the top of the backrest. He gave her an unenthusiastic glance before peering back down at his fingernails. "Joker?" she asked again, and he moved to sit up a little higher.

"What?" Though clearly short on patience, he was watching her. His head moved down to regard her hand as she pressed her own fingertips into the confiscated file that Arkham had offered her.

The two of them just looked at one another for a few moments, before Harley aggressively flipped the file open. She lifted the photograph of Arkham's board of directors with Harley's image gracing the background. "Now, you and I both know that Jeremiah Arkham has his head so far up his own ass that there's no possible way that he could tell the true reason why you'd clipped these articles. Isn't that right?"

"Just a little light reading," he quipped, but Harley pressed him further.

"Joker, the only constant in these two articles is _me_. You know that." She offered him a closer look, thrusting the photograph toward him.

Reaching out, he snatched it from her and held it a fair distance away from his face, as if he couldn't make it out without glasses. "Oh, is that you?" His eyes shot back up at her. When they did, they were met with a displeased look and a pair of folded arms. "Hmph... doesn't seem very fair. Everyone else gets the woman in the red dress, and I'm stuck with Ethel the Librarian."

She groaned in frustration. "Okay, first," she said, rising from her chair, "I will have you know that librarians are actually one of the most fantasized figures in male sexuality examinations." This was a tidbit of information that either surprised the Joker, or informed him. Either way his eyebrows shot up as he watched her pace about the room. "Furthermore, I don't know what kind of a wild and crazy sex-kitten you _might _fantasize me to be when I leave this place, but it definitely does not include me wearing a ridiculous, backless, $23,000 designer gown, alright?"

_'Twenty-three-thousand,'_ the Joker mouthed to her, sardonically impressed, before she waved him off and sat with a huff down in the chair again. His eyes moved over her for a moment, but he broke his stare and waved his hand about, squinting. "Wait, listen," he said abruptly, leaning over to snatch up the picture of her with Bruce Wayne. "This, is not ridiculous. Sex kitten, no... _God_ no!" Harley didn't know whether to be relieved or depressed at that. "But confident enough to wear red..." he suggested, biting his bottom lip to make his point. "It's not impossible to see that you managed to pull it off. Gotham's most eligible bachelor seems to want to take you for a ride..."

She snatched the picture back and gave him a cynical gaze. "Jealous?"

"No..." he fired back immediately.

Harley smiled broadly and looked down at the photograph with a sheepish grin. "I'd like to say that you don't know enough about me to assume such things. I'm sure in most cases, you'd be right... But in this case you couldn't be more wrong." Inhaling deeply, her next words were softer, her tone apologetic, "The only reason I wore that dress was because Arkham asked me to look like investors had something to throw their money at... and Bruce Wayne?" Gingerly, she placed the photographs back in the file and closed it. "Bruce is an old friend from college. It'd been eight years since I'd seen him last. Trust me, he wants nothing to do with me...after all, it's hard for anyone to be attracted to 'Ethel the Librarian' right?"

Shaking his head ever so slightly, the Joker rolled his eyes and loudly slapped his large palms down onto his thighs. "Okay... I'm _done_ having this pity party for you." His tone made her sit up straight. "Every time I turn around_,_ you always employ these subtle..._little_ strikes against your confidence. Don't paint yourself like a wallflower, because you're _not_."

He was right. She wasn't very quiet, not very standoffish, she could put her foot down when she needed to. But there was just something about herself that... didn't want to call any attention to herself. "Maybe that's why my life is so boring."

The Joker gestured back and forth between them. "Should we change places? Seems like you're the one getting the therapy today."

"We all have problems, Joker." She rested her elbow on the table, leaning her temple on her fingertips. "Are you really surprised that I'm a little more transparent than you?"

His eyes moved up and down her again with a more contemplative consideration. Then he sat up, crossed his legs tailor-style on his bed, facing the small, plywood footboard. "C'mon. C'mere and talk to daddy..." He patted the space on the mattress in front of him. "C'mon... I'm not going to bite you."

"I'd really rather not..."

"Sit," he said, a little more commandingly, and seemed pleased when Harley seemed to materialize in place in front of him. "Alright... now what is this? Daddy issues, or something? Your mother not hug you enough?"

She looked away from him and scoffed, shaking her head. "Where'd you get that diagnosis? A box of crackerjacks?" The thought of receiving therapy for the Joker was a joke in itself, but it was one she could laugh at.

"No, Harley, I'm serious." Sad thing was, he really did seem serious. His face was a little harder than it usually was, but not in any sort of angry, villainous way.

The first thing they taught you in "Active Patient Therapy" class was to remain objective with a patient - never get too involved with them, and don't let them get too involved with you. A good psychiatrist wasn't a lecturer, they were a _guide_. So that when the patient later asks you how you did it, you can explain that, really, they came to their healing on their own. Allowing the patient to know too much about their therapist created familiarity, and familiarity breeds contempt.

Still though... she gave him a pained expression and took a deep breath. "I don't know why, Joker. So I can't wear red? So I don't strut around like I own the place? So I don't wear a ton of makeup and spend hundreds of dollars on my hair? That means I'm low on myself? Just because I'm not arrogant doesn't mean I don't have confidence."

_Yeah,_ she suddenly thought to herself. _Yeah, that's right!_

"Why do you cringe when I look at you? Why do you cover up your figure in men's clothing? Why do you drain every drop of personality out of your voice when you ask a question?" He asked her a barrage or questions, every one of which seemed to sit and stew in her mind. He wagged a finger at her. "Admit it...there's something you don't like about yourself. You don't know what it is, but it's there, and you don't like it."

"So? There's plenty of bits about myself that I hate... one of them is how ridiculous I look in that dress," she shot back at him, and could feel herself closing up. _God, how can he tell?_

He leaned in just a smidge closer to look her in the eye. "There's nothing not to like."

His tone was so gentle, so honest, that it frightened her...so much so, that she'd leaned away from him without noticing. Silence was her only reply. He stretched his legs back and pressed his back against the wall by his pillow, punctuating his thought with a half smile and a gentle tilt of his head.

Something inside her chest snapped, and her face softened. Although he might have been proud of himself, Harley wouldn't have gone so far as to call him _smug_; he simply sat, both hands folded in his lap, his legs slightly outstretched. He appeared relaxed, but the worst part was the honesty. Why... _why_ did he have to sound so honest?

Logic kicked in. Immediately the gears in the left of her brain churned, tightened the muscles in her face, brought the cynicism back into her heart. It called out, _screamed _out, that she should stand and let him rot there alone. "You're trying to manipulate me," she told him, standing as suddenly as the thought had come to her.

The Joker seemed almost insulted by the insinuation. The corners of his eyes twitched when she moved, the springs in the mattress jostling to her missing weight. "No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are!" She stepped away from his bedside and leaned heavily on the backrest of the chair. "I'm not new at this Joker..."

"Shut up!" He got up on his knees and pointed at her, and it froze her still. Was it fear? Or was it exhilaration? She didn't know... but regardless, the volume of his voice clammed her mouth shut in the same way a cold wind might take your breath away when you've forgotten your jacket. With bare feet he stepped up off the bed and moved across the room. Harley turned and backpedaled away from him, suddenly panicked that there was no guard outside the door.

"Listen to me..." he growled, grabbing ahold of both her wrists and watching as she shuffled backward, finally coming to a halt against the adjacent wall. "_**Listen**_ to me..." He crossed her arms over one another so that she couldn't struggle. "Don't panic." Though it was very difficult not to with the Joker's face hovering only a few inches in front of hers.

She drew in a shivering breath, trying very hard to maintain her composure even as her eyes became large, her bottom lids desperately hanging on to tears that threatened to topple down her cheeks should she blink. They were Harley's very best puppy dog eyes, as if he might strike her with a rolled up newspaper. Slowly, she nodded.

The Joker took a breath, and darkly whispered a command. "There will be _no_ more," he began, pointing up to her face with a thickly callused index finger while the remaining four held on to her tightly. "Not another joke at your expense, not another cheap shot, no more fear of the woman in the red dress." When his eyes beamed down at her this tongue flicked out across the corner of his mouth and it was all she could do but look away.

"That's what you want?" Harley asked him in a nervous whisper, though for all the shock she could hardly feel the words roll off her tongue.

He nodded. "Yeah, that's what I want..." And here he inhaled deeply, peering down the bridge of his nose at her. "And I think you're going to find that's what _you _want, too, isn't it?"

There was this overwhelming sense of relief, a flood of calm that spread throughout her body. It didn't come when he slowly released her, it came just before that. Something in her mind seemed to snap in place. The Joker had set the rules for her, and for some reason even the thought of that dauntless color seemed to shake all of her doubts away.

With him standing before her, his black eyes scanning her face, she felt blank, as if there was no expression to assess. Finally, the Joker asked: "How do you feel?"

She said nothing for a long moment. Then she closed her mouth, swallowing hard. "I...I don't know..."

He grinned, looking at the clock on the wall with its thick plastic safety cover, and heaved a sigh. "Time's up, but...I think we made real progress today, Miss Quinzel."

There was no doubt in her mind that indeed they had, and Harley felt that if, indeed, her subconscious was a librarian named Ethel, she was surely dead.


	14. Chapter 14: Gone

Late at night in the MCU, all was quiet. Whereas over the course of the last month the place had been brimming with constant activity, the investigation surrounding the confiscated weaponry had now moved off into other jurisdictions, other departments. The staff had been left shaken, but all of them had kept a stiff upper lip and moved on. Justice was the only objective after the fear had dissipated, but the last one anyone ever expected to be so relaxed was Chief Carpozo.

Somehow, even after the mayor found out, Jim Gordon had managed to save the man's job through his endless calm reasoning. "Let us at least see the investigation through with him," Jim had asked the Mayor, who although firm, felt a certain amount of sympathy for the new Captain. "His level of intelligence regarding recent MCU activity will be beneficial."

He'd been right of course, but if the mayor wasn't going to take him out... someone else seemed adamant to do it for him.

_**BANG!**_

The stillness of the midnight shift shattered into a million pieces, much like the front windows to the MCU. The sparkling glass rained down in the cement walkways below, and immediately a few of Gotham's late-night drifters turned to watch.

As the last few shards of glass drifted toward the ground like falling snow, the soft crunching of broken glass filled the air, crushed underfoot by several men who moved single-file with military precision. Their backs pressed against the cobbled brick wall of the old building, they moved low and fast, as if they were climbers trapped upon a particularly treacherous cliff. Their shadows cast from the distance street lights were long and thin - alien distortions of their true figures, which made them seem all the more menacing as they skulked up to the entrance of the MCU.

At last the leading man pulled something from his pocket, and from behind the black visor of his helmet he signaled to the men who stood behind him. As panic flooded the building, the leader pulled the pin on a smoke grenade and tossed it nonchalantly through one of the hollowed windows.

One after the other, as each of the men placed a small mask over their mouths. A series of pauses followed and within seconds, smoke had begun cascading from the windows. Scuffling could be heard distantly inside - heavy coughing, a chair falling over, maybe a door slamming shut, and then silence again.

Three of the men swept into the building while the remaining few assisted a van as it came speedwheeling around a distant corner. One jumped into the passenger seat, and another threw open the two back doors, jumping in as two others held those doors open. From inside, the three men emerged, holding a forth. He lay limp in their arms, a plain cloth bag placed over his head. He wore a uniform and carried a rather wide stature.

Throwing this debilitated body into the back of the van, the doors slammed closed, and the dark, militantly methodical group disappeared just as quickly as they'd come.

The scent of burnt rubber and the sound of screeching tires preceded an eerie sense of calm that enveloped the wee hours of the morning. And in the distance, sirens could be heard.

# # # # # # #

It was the morning ritual in the Gordon house. Barbra would chase young Jimmy around with a fresh pair of socks, while the boy would insist on wearing sandals, even as the weather got cooler. Jim would laugh, and Barbra would scold her husband for influencing him. "Don't laugh Jim!" she'd usually say, "you'll only make him worse."

But today, Jim wasn't laughing. Today he was looking absently down at the telephone receiver he held in his shaking hand with empty eyes, terrified eyes. He wasn't entire sure how long he'd stood there - a minute, maybe two, but it wasn't even enough to hear Barbra's gentle voice call out to him once their horseplay had settled down.

"Jim?" she asked him from across the kitchen, and when he didn't respond she walked up to him and took him by

the shoulders. "Jim?"

His eyes came back into focus and he flashed back into reality at the sight of her. Not long afterward, he looked over to the doorway of the living room, where his young ten-year-old son stood, gently shaken by his father's lapse into shock. Motioning with his hand toward the front door, his soft voice came out as hardly above a whisper. "Go get those socks on, and put on your shoes like your mother asked you to."

Clearly, it was a tone Jimmy took seriously, since he made off toward the door without a peep, the sound of his little hurried steps scampering across the floor.

Once the child was out of earshot, Barbra turned to him once more. "What's happened?" she asked in a quiet, alarmed tone.

Jim's eyes scanned her face, trying to find an easy way to say the words, but at length, he found none. "MCU was broken into again a couple hours ago... and Brutus Carpozo was kidnapped."

Barbra always got that telltale look of shock, the way she placed both of her hands over her mouth, the way her eyes would bulge ever so slightly and glisten. "Oh, Jim..." she finally whispered, the sound muffled against the palm of her hands.

He wondered if she actually knew the gravity of the situation, but Barbra's heart was so big - he knew the things that she was worried about were his children, and his wife, and whether or not he would come home safe this time. He rubbed her shoulders lovingly, then looked off toward the door. They could hear the sound of the zipper on Jimmy's fall jacket and the sound his runners made as they squeaked across the linoleum in the front hallway.

"I have to go... Marshal from Internal Affairs is already there waiting for me... I've got to."

Barbra flattened her palm against her cheek to wipe away a few tears, and forced a smile. It unnerved him – she was far too good at it. Jim's shock subsided for a moment, and for the first time in minutes he took what felt like his first breath. "Yeah, you go..." she said, but her reassuring tone meant nothing. He knew it was the last place she wanted him to be.

"You take those kids to school, and you call me when you get into work. I'll let you know if I'll be home for dinner," he said calmly, maybe a little too calmly. Both of them were putting on a show for the other. Jim always thought that maybe if he seemed just confident enough she wouldn't worry. He guessed that she did very much the same thing to make him feel a little better about leaving home. It didn't...

After she kissed his cheek and ushered their eerily silent children through the front door, he stopped at the bedroom to finish getting ready for what he was very sure would be an incredibly long day. He flattened his palm down over the surface of his shirt, straightening the knot of his black-pinstriped tie, before he slid his jacket up over his shoulders and adjusted the lapel. He was going through the motions, looking blankly into the mirror, straightening a few stray facial hairs.

Brutus had been working at the MCU for only a couple months, and the thought of anyone taking him as a statement against his agenda just didn't make any sense to him. He hadn't done anything to upset anyone, anything to create any enemies for himself. Jim's mind worked feverishly to answer impossible questions; questions he didn't think would ever need answering. There was so much more to life as the Commissioner than the MCU...frequent meetings, politicians, court cases, federal appeals, restructuring, departmentalizing officers, all the while trying to keep the force as squeaky clean as possible. it was not a job just one man could do.

Commissioner Lowe'd had a very public problem with scotch, which - quite literally - ended up being the death of him. He'd never been a drinker, but Jim was beginning to understand the appeal. How else could one man deal with the guns, the corruption, the murders, and now Carpozo...? As his mind filled with these thoughts, Jim's head began to spin, and slowly he could feel the walls closing in.

There was a pressure in his ears, a distinct feeling of being held underwater, an inability to breathe, and a final bout of nausea that overcame him before he rushed from the kitchen and out the back door onto the tiny wooden stoop in the alleyway. It was still dark, shards of light sprinkling the place, like a window blind missing the occasional slat. The fresh air and the relatively open space forced his lungs to expand and calmed the shaking in his hands. He felt like he'd just broken the surface of the water after holding his breath for just a little too long.

His peace was short lived.

"Good morning," came the raspy voice that he'd first became acquainted with on that very stoop.

Had Gordon not been on a razor's edge at that very moment, he might not have been so jumpy. As it was, he nearly jumped over the stoop's railing and into a nearby dumpster. He turned to look at Batman, who crouched atop a wooden banister in the early morning light. He tucked himself away into the shadows when Gordon had visually acknowledged him.

It didn't take Jim more than a second to abrade the caped crusader. "Jeez, God damn it! _Announce_ yourself once in every so often!" he called out. "I get it! You're mysterious!"

There was a moment of repentant silence from Jim's end, and quiet understanding from Batman's. Without requiring an apology, and offering Jim enough time to settle down from his outburst, he whispered the point of his concern from the shadows. "Brutus Carpozo is gone."

"Yeah..." Jim muttered, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "I spoke to one of the investigators on the scene, over the phone. They said the windows were clearly blown out from the inside, and it's kind of hard to keep the press from drawing their own conclusions on that." Windows blown out from in the inside was a telltale sign of an inside job. And it was _amateur_, and it confused Gordon. Why anyone had decided to set charges on the inside was beyond him. They could have done the exact same job with plastic explosives from the outside.

But Jim knew Batman didn't care. It wasn't his job to control the flow of information to the media. His concern was the now-missing captain of the MCU, which was going to cause a very large stink in the public eye. There was no avoiding it at this point... and suddenly, Jim had the distinct feeling that he should have come clean to the press when he had the chance.

"It's an inside job."

"Of course it is... most everything in this damn town is..." Jim said disappointedly. He nudged an aluminum trash can with the toe of his Italian leather shoe. "But what anyone would want with him in beyond me." Turning to look back over to the shadow that he'd crawled into, he moved out into the light ever so slightly. "You've been out of the loop for so long now, I don't know if it's worth catching you up." He offered a gentle grin.

"Not as far out of the loop as you might think."

Batman had always been crafty enough to show up at crime scenes just as Jim arrived, always under the radar, always unannounced. Maybe he'd given him flack for his ability to seemingly materialize out of thin air, but after realizing that it'd been some time since he'd received Batman's help...it had become clear how much of an asset he was. "People are out for your blood. I can't help but wonder if getting you involved is good for my health, let alone yours."

"What Gotham needs are answers...answers that you and I can provide for them. Getting involved is not a question of necessity. It's a question of inevitability," Batman explained, but it wasn't without Jim's retort.

"Before, you were a hero. We'd put that light in the sky, and the crime rate would drop. _Nightly_. But now... it would be like starting a witch hunt. Some time might have passed, but it's not going to stop people from chasing you."

"Then let's keep this off the radar," Batman said, and out from under his engulfing cap he tossed the commissioner what he believed upon first inspection was a small brick.

It was, in fact, the newest model of Blackberry on the market – red and gleaming. Gordon turned a skeptical but jovial expression down to it, then back up to Batman. "You sure red's my color?" he said idly, before he was offered a set of instructions.

"This Blackberry is on a closed signal. The only two people who can access it are the one holding it, and myself, from a secure location. This will assist you in leaking information about this rash of crimes to me. But I'm leaving that decision up to you," Batman told the commissioner, who turned down to glance at the device when the screen flashed on. The display indicated there was a new message. When he opened it, the sender was listed as only a random set of numbers.

"Well, if anyone starts asking questions, I can say I'm working with...a consultancy firm. God knows we've had to resort to them before." Oftentimes, the supreme secrecy of Gordon's prowess was enough to stun the entire city, and not just because of its clandestine hero. Sadly, if you wanted to do anything honest in this town, it required playing your cards very close to your chest.

Gordon's expression turned from intrigued to pensive, and his steely blue eyes moved back to Batman. If he wanted to be hated, and chased, put his life on the line without appreciation, that was his prerogative as far as Jim was concerned... but he had to know. "You sure you're ready to do this again? You told me once... you'd told me I'd never have to say 'thank you', but what do you get out of this?" he asked, almost nonchalantly, already expecting not to receive an answer. "Why do you keep coming back to help those who don't want you?"

"It's not up to them," Batman said bluntly. "I'll never stop coming back."

"Yeah... well," Jim started, but then glanced down to the Blackberry when it vibrated in his palm. "You're going to have to swallow your pride some day and let someone send you a card or something because-"

But when Jim turned his head to look up, he was gone.

Meetings with the Batman were always brief at best, but today there was something different about the way he'd swept in. Today it brought a much-needed sense of relief; Jim felt a little lighter when he dropped that cell phone into his jacket pocket, trotting back up the few steps from the alley and back into the kitchen door. He picked his wallet up from the counter, instinctively placing it in the left back pocket of his trousers, and spun his keys around his finger before folding over the cover of his badge, placing it in his inside jacket pocket.

A moment ago it had been a day of reckoning – a virtual Armageddon. But now... now he felt indestructible.

Now he had backup.

# # # # # # #

**Note from the Author:**

_Hey Guys! _

_I can't believe it's the end of the week already! Posting every day made it go super fast!_

_Some of you hardcore batman fans will be excited to see that I put a modern twist of Commissioner Gordon's red Bat-phone.  
_

_I hope you enjoyed my blitz week. Understandably I'm going to take a week off now to get caught up, on some writing and some rest. Preparing myself for this endeavor took a lot of work, but the rewards were well worth it. So, at this point, I'm glad to announce that we're nearly half way through part one, which should culminate around Chapter 32 or 33 depending on how many changes and additions I try to sneak in. _

_By the end of next week I should be wrapping up on Chapter 18 and as you can imagine things are going to get even crazier as times goes on. _

_I have some really great readers who have been doing a lot to inspire me. You guys have no idea how appreciative I am of all the comments. I try to respond to everyone individually, so don't be shy and I promise to get back to you ^_~! In all honesty I would love to do this again in a couple months, particularly as we get to the end of part one, since I think the added suspense will require a faster pace._

_Ok! So I'll see you guys in a week and a bit. I'm thinking I'm going to change my regular weekly posting date to the Monday (since everyone and their brother tries to post on Sunday). So please look forward to Chapter 15 on Monday June 28__th__!_

_See you then!_


	15. Chapter 15: Mirror

**Note from the Author:** _Wow guys! I can not tell you how much I missed posting! Getting a chapter up here everyday just made my life seem to move at the speed of light. Felt like Friday came around too quickly. Trust me, I would love to post a chapter every day, but you and I both know the story would suffer for it. Well, such is life. Don't worry though, because if you liked my blitz week, you're going to love the sequel. I'm going to do it again in about twelve weeks time when we come to the end of Part One! I have a very exciting climax planned for the end of Part One, so you're definitely going to want to stay tuned for that! Anyway, thanks for holding out for this chapter. It was a lot of fun to write, and I hope you have just as much fun reading it. Enjoy!_

**[EDIT]** _Hey guys, _! You know I hate double posting a chapter. It's low, and when I see people doing it, often times just to get back to the top of the list, it kinda irks me. I (like I'm sure many of you) have been having huge issues with Traffic and Alerts. I also found a couple mistakes that were bothering me. If you've read my profile then you probably know that I'm not too seasoned on so, I don't know of any other way to replace chapters legitimately without pushing myself back to the top. Like I've said, I don't like it, and if someone can tell me if there's another way, I'd happily do it... Sadly this is the way it has to be right now, so I'm running with it. Please expect Chapter 16 next Monday, July 5th. Thanks!_

"Arkham let you get away with this?"

Okay, maybe she'd begged, but she wasn't about to tell the Joker that. It had, to the day, officially been two months since Harley had started therapy with the Joker. No one, including herself, thought that he would take so well to one person in particular, especially after all those people who'd originally met with him. Over the course of sixty days, he'd gone from aggressive, to passive aggressive; compulsively lying, to only lying occasionally. He would sometimes talk to other doctors, but at length he only spoke to Harley.

And she absolutely loved it. There was something incredibly rewarding about being in his favor. As much as she knew that she was there to help him, to guide him to a healthy psyche, she liked the Joker just the way he was – crazy or not.

"Well, I had to throw some crackpot idea at him that..." And here she cleared her throat and changed the sound of her voice to that mild-mannered professional tone that she knew he hated so much. "Seeing as how the Joker places _incredible emotional importance_ on his freedom, I believe that it is imperative that we distinguish exactly what his responses are to environmental stimuli."

"You are so full of shit," he said, rolling his eye and brandishing an amused smile.

"Yeah, I know..."

The two of them stood in a stairwell, and Harley held her back against a door leading outside. She never felt one-hundred-percent safe with him. He could have thrown her down the stairs, made a break for it... but he didn't... but he could.

"But hey, he fell for it," she said. "So you're on a day pass. Now, there are costs: the roof comes with a suicide fence, and of course there will be at least one sniper trained on you at all times..."

"Ah... freedom," he cooed wistfully, and she giggled.

Nodding, she reached into her lab coat and pulled out her favorite pair of Raybans, the old-school wayfarer style that Bob Dylan used to wear. "Here. You'll need these." Holding them out for him, she blinked in confusion when she noticed that he appeared less than enthused.

"Do I _look_ like Elvis Costello to you?" That left eyebrow of his would lift when he was pulling her leg, but he took them from her anyway. "Why do I need these, exactly?"

"Well, you haven't been exposed to sunlight in nearly three months, and it just so happens to be a particularly beautiful day outside. It's going to take your eyes some time to adjust." She smiled when he placed them over his eyes before spreading his hands out to frame his face.

"How do I look?" he asked, and something triggered her memory of _Breakfast At Tiffany's_.

"Just fabulous, Miss Hepburn," she teased, channeling the film's wayfarer-wearing star.

"Okay!" he said, ripping them from his face, but she insisted.

"C'mon! I'm kidding. What, you can't take a joke? That's ironic." She chuckled and then winked at him. "You look good, I promise."

"Yeah?" he'd asked in his low, gruff voice... and although he sounded very much like he didn't care, he had raised his brows over the top of the glasses.

She pulled in a deep breath and nodded. "Oh yes, very handsome."

Pulling the glasses down the bridge of his nose, he looked her over and shrugged rather coolly. "You're not so bad yourself, _toots_."

Harley hadn't gone all-out, but she'd left her librarian days behind her. She'd found herself becoming partial to tight-fitting skirts and wide ties. The appearance of a jacket underneath her lab coat was still rare, but was becoming more of a necessity the further they got into autumn. Today though, the sun was shining, there was a light breeze, and it was one of those days where you truly forget what time of year it was.

"Careful..." she started, and placed her hand heavily on his shoulder. "You keep up with that Fifties slang and I'll be _real_ gone, you know what I'm sayin', Daddy-o?"

"C'mon..." He grabbed her wrist, and when he moved up the last few stairs toward the door, Harley used her back to push it open.

There was a rush of cool air from outside, just enough to push their hair back until the pressure inside had equalized. It was bright, and large fluffy white clouds floated in an endless blue sky. They were on the roof of Arkham, which was very rarely used for anything other than maintenance; the facility had a tapered roof, so there wasn't a lot of space to roam around, but no one really came up here for anything else but the view or to fix the less-than-impressive air conditioner.

From where they had entered, the Narrows remained relatively out of sight. The skyscrapers of Arkham's downtown business district stood behind them, glistening in the early afternoon sunlight. In front was the Sprang River, crisscrossed with various bridges, and beyond that, the significantly wider Gotham River.

But, more than the surroundings, more than the whisper of freedom, more than the beaming warm sunlight, was the air. God, she could only imagine what it must have felt like for him. Arkham was so stale, so musty – a hundred years of dusty hallways and terrible memories. Everything sat stagnant in there, and it was hard to breathe most of the time. There were a few moments, when he stepped over to the ten-foot-high chain link fence that surrounded the perimeter of the roof, that he was silent. The Joker hooked a few of his thick fingers over the thin metal link and inhaled deeply through his nose. A gentle breeze tossed his hair to and fro, and she thought that from where she was standing she could almost hear his sandpaper lids crinkle over his dark, dry, shielded eyes.

Harley's heart sank when she saw his reaction. "I realize now how incredibly cruel it was to bring you up here," she whispered, but he turned swiftly to look over his shoulder at her.

"Hmm?" he'd asked as if he hadn't heard her. "No, Harley, you've never been cruel to me."

Maybe she hadn't. In fact, she'd often gone intentionally out of her way to be nice to the man, when many had said he deserved very few niceties at all. She smiled when he spoke, but he just turned around to look out to the river again.

Harley let him be for a few minutes, and figured that he was thinking either about nothing at all, or too many things to count. She allowed him the time he needed. "So," she began, taking a few steps toward him and leaning her back against the chain link fence, beside him. "How do you feel?" Harley's voice was softer then it usually was when she asked...normally it was an abrupt question with an abrupt answer; one would say 'good' or 'fine' just to get you off their back. Circumstances were slightly different today.

The sunglasses offered the Joker a kind of physical shield, rather than an emotional one, and Harley was beginning to find it very hard to read him when she couldn't see his eyes. He simply shrugged, grunted, and turned to rest his back along the fence as well.

She'd inhaled to ask another question, but instead he quickly asked one of his own. "Why do you do nice things for me?" he asked quickly, as if he needed to say it fast before he lost the nerve.

"What do you mean?"

"I m_eeee_an..." He drew the word out as he looked for another way to query her. "I'm a _bad man_, Harley. I could _kill_ you right here and now, and no one would be the wiser," he said, throttling his hands around an imaginary neck. "But you trust me, you talk to me like I've got half a brain, you take me outside on a nice day, and you let me wear your three hundred dollar sunglasses. You treat everyone this way?"

"Just my friends," she answered.

The Joker turned to look at her, taking off the glasses and narrowing his eyes at her suspiciously. He clucked his tongue a couple times and then rested the glasses along his hair line "You, don't have a great social life, do you?"

She snorted her amusement. "I don't have a problem with my social life. Sometimes I fight with the ethics surrounding the fact that I believe myself not just your doctor, but also your friend. Just like I have moral dilemmas about what exactly constitutes... good or evil, for instance. Sometimes we don't do things we always understand." She paused and flashed him a contemplative smile before she continued. "You could kill me, but you _don't_. You have done these terrible things, but they are not without a point. You are a man, not so much illustrated by what it is you do, but the idea that you possess."

"Hmm..." With a very curious glance, he flicked the glasses back down from his brow to cover his eyes once again and turned to look off.

"'_Hmm_'... what?" she asked.

The Joker smiled broadly. "You're smarter than I give you credit for."

Harley smiled and nodded her head curtly. "Thank you... I think."

As the two of them stood in the warm light reflecting of the banks of skyscrapers just across the river, there was a silence that passed between them. But by the time Harley had noticed it, it was only to think about how comfortable it felt for such an awkward silence.

"So, what's the moral dilemma?" he finally asked, turning to look at her - though due to the blackness covering his eyes, she wasn't entirely sure what he was looking at.

Raising her brows and stuffing her hands into the pockets of her lab coat, she only shifted her eyes to meet his face, and blushed when she realized he seemed to be looking at her intently. "Which moral dilemma is this? I have several of them."

"Oh-ho!" he exclaimed, excitedly. "Well, is one of them whether or not you should sleep with your _clearly_ dysfunctional, yet oh-so-charming, _vehemently_ psychotic patient?"

Not a fraction of a second had passed before Harley let out a window shattering laugh at the sheer absurdity of the question. It was so loud that she immediately cupped both her hands over her mouth. But the laugh insisted on its freedom. So much so that it continued to emerge from behind clasped hands, as if restrained by some shy Japanese school girl. And when she'd tried to contain that, it rattled the soft palette at the back of her throat.

Her eyes had been clenched tight with hilarity, and when she finally opened them again, she saw the tiniest furrow of his light eyebrows from behind the glasses. "Oh...ho...ho... nooo...oh, no..." After which only a few nervous chuckles left her gaping mouth. "No, I was thinking more along the lines of good and evil."

Perhaps if she hadn't known him so well, she might have been offended. With anyone else it would have been grounds to write him off as a patient all together. But so far in their patient/doctor relationship she'd pounced on him, and he'd attempted to fondle her, and they'd been in numerous arguments, and they'd sworn a blue streak at each other, gotten upset, laughed...so she'd interpreted the question as a joke.

And while he was very funny, she was beginning to realize more and more that the Joker wasn't a fan of _being_ the punch line.

She felt bad. If he'd been a normal man, the damage done to his ego would have been catastrophic. She choked out an apology. "I... uh... heh..." Her mouth spread into its usual toothy grin. "I'm sorry... the whole professionalism thing, you know? Because trust me, if crazy people were on the menu, I'd probably get laid a lot more."

The Joker's smile could have exploded off his face and it wouldn't have gotten any larger. Harley's palm swiftly met her forehead. "Oh, now _that_ didn't sound right...I meant you would have to be crazy to...gah!" She violently shook her hands back and forth. "No, no! That's not what I meant either."

Though still smiling, Harley was amazed at how forgiving he was when he asked. "So, good and evil?"

Inwardly, she heaved a sigh of relief, though she knew the Joker was all too pleased with having flustered her for a moment. He'd done it before, but that little quip of his had turned her cheeks nearly every hue of red. "Yes! Good and evil... very important topic, er... moral dilemma."

"Yeah," he croaked, "I'm sure." He'd stood up from his leaning position on the fence and was idly kicking at the gravel that covered most of the roof top. With his hands stuffed in his pockets and his eyes on his shoes like that, he looked like a child getting scolded for some bit of mischief. Regardless of how ferocious the blush on her face happened to be, she couldn't help but look upon him with an endearing gaze.

"You're conflicted?" he asked finally.

Harley didn't want to go so far as to say that. Everyone got their wires crossed once in every so often. "Mmm... maybe. I don't know." She shrugged and looked away from him for a moment. "Sometimes it seems like the world is a genuinely good place... and maybe working here is beginning to make me jaded. Hell, maybe it's this whole damn town."

Harley usually loved to explore the details of her conversations, so when she received a curious glance from the Joker she knew it was justified. She was being a little vague, but philosophical conversations were not her forté. She waved him off with a sheepish smile. "Never mind, it's not really important anyway."

Silence took him as his eyes repeatedly flicked from her face and back down to his shoes. It was as though he was periodically studying her face at intervals to measure its gradual movements, from skeptical to curious - and then he snorted, as he usually did when he was amused by someone else's idiocy. A soft chuckle radiated from the back of his throat, and his face took on the expression of sarcastic agreement.

"Maybe you're right, maybe people put way too much thought into it. But, you know..." And here he lifted his gaze back up to her face from the gravel below. "As someone who makes their living on analyzing the way that other people think, you might want to know where you stand on at least a _couple_ of important issues."

Harley's eyes half-lidded with displeasure - half because of the backhanded insult, and half because he was right. Her generally centered mindset made her very non-confrontational, but also very boring. Sadly, she couldn't be anything but honest. "I'm a firm believer that you have your way, and I have mine, though neither way might be right, or wrong, or just. I don't know a lot about philosophy. I find it pretty irrelevant... to be quite honest."

The Joker stopped kicking the dirt for a moment and looked up, almost surprised. "Oh! It didn't seem that way when you told me about your California nihilist. Now it's irrelevant? Why?"

Gazing at him for a few seconds, she lifted her hands out of her pockets and into an exaggerated shrug. Sighing, she looked out over the mirrored surface of the skyscrapers that reflected against Gotham like a vertical lake. "Well, because it doesn't make any sense to believe in one set of rules, in one moral code, you know?" She paused and her eyes shot back to him, full of deliberate reflection – eyebrows furrowed, steely blue orbs transfixed on his face. "We're slaves to our perspective, which constantly..."

"_Changes_?" he cut her off to ask, and when he did the memory of their first real session came back to her. The hardened, thoughtful features in her face dissolved when she realized how closely her own opinion had mirrored his own.

The Joker's wicked grin had returned by now. From where he had been idly kicking at stones, he took a few firm, quick steps over to her and spoke, no more then a foot away now. "_Exactly_." He was shaking a finger at her before his hands splayed out and moved violently around his head, but she didn't tremble at his frantic movement. "If everyone followed the rules we'd have everyone figured out! In fact... that's why I find it _sooo easy_. People might say that they don't live by the rules, but sooner then later you're going to be able to lump them into their little groups," he told her, demonstrating with his hands, as if sorting tiny people into their individual cliques in the space between them.

"How does that help?"

His eyes widened. "Well! Once you've got someone sorted out, it becomes very easy to predict how they're going to react, and once I've figured out how they're going to react..." He popped his lips a couple times and then looked down at her.

Maybe she'd been looking up at him a little too admirably, but as soon as she began to speak, he looked frustrated. "Once you know how they're going to react, it's easier to manipulate them."

He immediately pulled away, turning his back to her and grunting his displeasure. It was easy to notice, now that the Joker was in open space, how much he required movement. Even now he paced along the roof, trying desperately to make himself heard. "No, no, no... you're just not getting it. I don't like to think of it as being manipulative, I like to think of it as being _smart_." He tapped his forehead with an impatient finger, then shook it at her again. "See, you're the one who thinks I'm being manipulative, but you're the _queen_ of mixed signals. I'm your _friend_, but I'm _manipulative_, I'm going to _kill_ you, but I won't talk to anyone _but_ you. I'm not manipulating you, you're doing that fine on your own."

"I'm not sure, alright?" she told him suddenly, her arms extending to her side in another heavy, dramatic shrug. "I don't - I don't know _what_ I believe, what I think! One minute I think one thing, the next I think something else entirely. My opinion on this shit is so all over the place that I just keep my mouth shut to save myself from looking like an asshole." She said it half-jokingly, but there was still some sad little quirk about her face once her tiny lines had smoothed out.

He seemed to relax at the same pace she did, and from his slightly hunched body positioning, he straightened his back and sauntered the few steps back over to her. "I know the words are there..." Her right hand gestured to her mouth, defeated. "I just don't know what they are... how can you hold on to something you can't even describe?"

"Good, bad. Heroes, villains..." He counted off on his fingers, one by one. "These are subjective. Good guys turn into bad guys depending on your perspective." His conviction gave her such a chill that she felt her back flex inward, and her shoulderblades pressed together as every teeny-tiny strand of peach-fuzz on her back seemed to catch a whisper of electric current and stiffened every muscle. She remained frozen while he continued.

"The men who lock people up in here, this is their version of justice?" He waved his hand out over the city scape, but kept his eyes locked on her. "They got crooked cops running all around Gotham who will change their tune for a little bit of money, guards sworn to guide and serve the mentally ill who would take a billy club to anybody who looked at them the wrong way, doctors who would rather torture than treat...and _these_ are the people who are supposed to protect you?"

Obediently, she shook her head back and forth.

"And if these are the good guys, what about the _bad_ guys?" he asked, tilting his head down to bite his bottom lip, highlighting the irony. "Well, then maybe you need to consider that the bad guys are not actually so bad at all. See _those_ guys..." His hand flashed out over the city again, and when Harley's eyes shot over to glance at it, his opposite hand grabbed her chin and directed her line of sight back to his face. "_Those_ guys, they act on urges like greed, or lust, or anger... the good guys shed their stripes for opportunity. They ask, 'what can I get out of it?'."

Where for a second his grip on her face had been firm, it changed once he had her undivided attention again. Now, instead of moving her head to move himself into her line of sight, it was a gentle tweaking of her chin that finished off with a gentle, almost affectionate tap on the nose. "I've never asked myself that question." he explained, shaking his head slowly with half-lidded eyes "I do the things I've done...because _they need doing_."

Her eyes were wide, and sparkled with fanciful wonder at his words, and for a moment he smiled and seemed to glow with a kind of teacher's pride. But, when the wonderment had subsided, and her eyes had finally managed to pull away from his, there was a thought that struck her suddenly. "How long did it take you to let go of enough of your faith in people to formulate that theory?" she asked him.

He smiled. "Sometimes you have to let go to see if there was anything worth holding on to," he said to her, almost a little too lightly, because as she was absorbing the complete profoundness of his thought, he had taken hold of her wrist to look at her watch. "Time's up... I _do_ love leaving you on a high note."

"Joker..." Her tone was insistent on more conversation, but he'd clearly had enough of the topic, with the way he swung his body around in a circle to head back down the way they'd come.

He held the door open for her and gestured within. "To be completely honest, I'm far less worried about good and evil than I am about this whole 'not-sleeping-with-me' thing."

Her expression dropped again and she walked past him and into the stairwell below. "I told you, it's a professionalism thing."

"Well ,you know, I could always just break out of here."

"Heh..." Harley chuckled skeptically. "Yeah, right..."


	16. Chapter 16: Snitch

Bruce was awake, which didn't surprise Alfred. It seemed that in the last couple of months, he was always awake. He'd developed a nice pair of particularly dark circles around his eyes that made him look years older than he actually was. Alfred didn't say anything. It was hard to get him to listen a word he said anyway.

What was so strange about Bruce this morning was that he sat perched on a stool in from of the steel and marble counter, reading the paper – a rare sight this early in the morning. The young master usually made a habit of lingering in his bedroom for a while, unless he was otherwise indisposed. The gray, early morning light that entered in through the large windows cast him in eerie solemnity. He looked very much like the Thinker, posed thoughtfully as he angrily considered the front page.

"Something troubling in the news, Master Wayne?" he asked, but there was no reply, causing Alfred's worry to surge through his body. It moved him to take a few steps to read over the young man's shoulder.

The photograph was grainy, but clear enough to be distressing. Taken with a telescopic lens, the photograph was clearly taken from the window of an adjacent building. It depicted a young woman in a lab coat. She had long dark hair tied into a ponytail, wore a wide-eyed expression, and had her hands in her pockets. She was standing in front of a man that Alfred had to strain to recognize. They'd crossed paths only once before – at Master Bruce's fundraiser for Harvey Dent. Just the look of the man had rendered Alfred speechless... but he appeared different now: more subdued without the addition of make-up and the advantage of a well-timed entrance.

The part of the photograph that was the most shocking was not the man, or the woman who stood before him. It wasn't even the fact that they met on the ominous rooftop at Arkham Asylum. It was the affectionate way the unmasked Joker tweaked her chin, a gesture that seemed to have caught the young lady off guard, though she had not physically reacted when the picture was taken.

Though he tried his very best, Alfred did not recognize her.

"Damn..." Bruce said, before he angrily slid the paper across the counter-top, using hurried, enraged hands to push the hair away from his face.

Alfred stretched over calmly, retrieving the paper and its disheveled parts, and folded the one section back into the other, rolling it up in his hands much as it had been delivered. "Master Bruce?" he asked softly, but before he had the chance to continue the young man launched into a scathing tirade.

"Jeremiah Arkham is the devil." He said it calmly, but in that menacing way he had when he was truly furious. "He knew that girl was soft, and he used her anyway to manipulate the Joker into talking."

"The girl, sir?" Alfred asked, unraveling the paper to look at it again. He spied the girl for a moment longer before looking up to Bruce once more. "I don't recognize her."

She was a pretty girl, and the old man had to admit that there was something vaguely related to Rachel in her features. Rachel had been tall as well, but this woman was leaner, a little younger, and yielded more delicate features in her face. Though her brown hair was a distinct reminder of Bruce's childhood friend, the two were not immediately comparable.

Bruce gestured to the picture that Alfred held with a clenched fist and a forlorn glance. "It's a girl I used to know in college. She was a friend of mine."

"A friend of yours, sir?" That could have meant a number of things.

Bruce furrowed his heavy, dark brows in response, and glared at him from the corner of his eye. "Yes, a _friend_. We became reacquainted at that ridiculous gala Arkham threw."

The gala, being a month and a half ago, had provided Bruce ample time to tell Alfred about her. the fact that he hadn't was another strange occurrence to add to this morning's list. She had been a friend to him, and now here she was, so close to who she couldn't possibly know to be his greatest enemy.

"Her name is Harleen Quinzel. She's an intern at Arkham's Asylum..."

This surprised the old man, and suddenly it was so easy to see where Bruce's concern stemmed from. "Ah, I see...so Dr. Arkham is using the young, pretty thing as bait for the menacing psychopath." Drawing lines in-between conflict was one of Alfred's strong suits, though he knew that Master Bruce had no doubt reached the same conclusion by now. When he looked down at the photograph one last time, he admitted to himself that if someone had looked at him that way, he might have had a hard time admitting to their lunacy.

The scar on his lips might have been intimidating, but the look in the Joker's eyes as he glanced down at her was as soft as butter. Maybe that was what had placed such a look of deep surprise in her eyes.

"They're already letting the guy out for a breath of fresh air? What's next? A weekend pass?" Bruce muttered under his breath. He inspected his fingernails, his expression hardening even further, taking a breath when he looked up to Alfred. "How could Arkham do this?"

"With all due respect, sir – it doesn't sound like you have a lot of faith in your friend. Why, it says right here that they had three snipers trained on him at all times." Alfred gestured to the article on the front. "She's a doctor, and without his knives and his makeup, he's just a man with a scar."

"No, Alfred, he's not."

"Well then, what does that say about you?" He'd snapped back almost a little too quickly.

Bruce froze and stared at the Alfred, taken aback by the sudden aggression in the butler's voice. Paying no heed to his shock, the old man straightened his back, took a deep breath, and stood with full conviction in what he'd just said.

"You let the world believe that you were just a man in a mask. You took the heat so the Joker would never win, and look." Tossing down the paper in front of him again, the image seemed to stare Bruce in the face. "Did you honestly think that those walls were going to hold him forever?"

"No," came his short and crestfallen reply.

"Of course not... because he's not just a man with some knives and some makeup, just like you're not a man in a mask, or the murderer of Harvey Dent. You are men defined by your ideas, and you've lost sight of what it is you stand for," he said, wagging a critical finger at him.

Bruce was quiet for a couple moments, and looked up at Alfred much the way he had when he had been scolded by him in his youth.

"Now he has a friend," Alfred went on, "and while you think you stand alone in this world, you must know that it's simply not true. Just because you _feel_ alone, sir...doesn't mean you _are_ alone." And that adamant finger of his pressed into the young man's shoulder.

"But this girl..." he started, but Alfred cut him off.

"You told me that Batman has no friends. Perhaps not. But _Bruce Wayne_ does. Bruce Wayne is never alone." His tone was softer now that Bruce seemed to be relieved from his worry. "The question you need to ask yourself, now, is not how this can be stopped. The question is... when he gets out, will you be ready for him?"

# # # # #

"Arkham, what the _hell_ is this?"

Jeremiah Arkham's young red-headed receptionist had come running in after Harleen as she'd burst through the large waiting room and into his distinguished office. The walls were lined with floor to ceiling oak bookshelves, and all the furniture had the distinct smell of leather. He'd been standing behind a very large and ornately-carved Partner's desk, and with his round glasses and balding head the pose made him seem presidential in appearance.

"Dr. Quinzel," chimed in the receptionist, "you cannot barge in without an appointment!"

Arkham's perceived authority did not scare Harley. She made that fact perfectly clear by striding up to his desk and slamming the newspaper down upon it's sleek, polished surface, clearly displaying the photograph and attached article.

"Oh, _yes_? Does Dr. Arkham have a lot of colleagues who book appointments simply to barge in angrily on him?" Harley asked her, so aggressively that the young woman cowered away, though still adamant to remove her from the room. "Get out of here!"

Glancing down at the photograph and then back up to the furious young doctor, Arkham waved off his insistent receptionist. Pouting and straightening her jacket, she turned to leave the office, the large oak door closing behind her. As soon as it had, Harley unleashed the tongue-lashing she'd been holding back since she'd laid eyes on the paper earlier that morning. She'd barely managed to save it from being sprayed by the mouthful of coffee she'd been drinking.

"Alright, now please explain to me how it is - with all of the big-wigs, fat-cats and _bourgeoisie_ pigs you know down at the _Gotham Times_ - that _this_ piece of journalistic filth would wash up on the cover a mere _two days_ after it was taken?" She was livid - wide eyes almost red with fury, and nostrils flaring so hard that it might have been steam instead of air pouring from her nose and ears, like that furious dragon of children's nightmares.

Arkham was silent for a moment, gently drumming his fingertips on the table. Then, at last, he removed a strange object from his pocket. It was too long, and too narrow to be a pen, but right now Harley wasn't paying it much mind. "Does this picture upset you?" he asked her in a soothing voice, as if she were the one in therapy.

"Upset me? Arkham, there are three people in this city who know I'm treating the Joker. My mother called me at six o'clock this morning, freaking out because she knows I'm spending my days with a psychopath. I've got friends that read the _Gotham Times_... family members. People who shouldn't know what kind of risk I'm putting myself in to treat your patient. And the only thing you can think to ask me is '_does this picture upset you?'_" She heaved a large sigh and leaned both of her palms on the breadth of Arkham's wide desk. "I'm not ashamed of what I'm doing, but there are people out there who are going to worry about me, and _even more_ people who are going to be concerned that you are having an _intern_ treating your most high-profile patient. Once I realized you hadn't told the board of directions about this, I thought the objective was to keep it under wraps, as much as possible."

He waved away her outburst with both hands, motioning for her to sit in the chair across from him. She did, flopping into it heavily and leaning her forehead on her finger tips.

"Relax, relax," Arkham told her. "This really could not have been better timed. The Joker's observational period is over in just three months, and for the public to get a glimpse of him will only renew interest in his trial." He explained this as if it had provided just the kind of attention he'd been looking for. "Did you read the article? It really does paint him in our favor."

Harley had read most of the article before getting ready for work, but had been interrupted by her mother's phone call. Indeed, the article seemed to go out of it's way to make the Joker look crazy, - a manic depressive man, who'd begged for his momentary breath of freedom that day on the roof top. "You and I both know that this article is not going to fly to anyone with half a brain," she told Arkham. "The Joker hasn't shown any symptoms of depression. Mania, sure! But that man is not bipolar...that's not even on the list that I've begun compiling."

"Oh, Harley." Leaning back in his chair, Arkahm crossed his legs and continued to spin the thin, metallic object around between his fingers. "You give the readership too much credit. This is _Gotham City_, where people crave _drama_ over fact, _adventure_ over reality... you think it's too much of a stretch for them to think that Gotham's favorite lunatic is simply going...crazier?" His casual laugh made it clear that he didn't think so. "It'll send my investors through the roof to know that not only is the Joker being held, but that he's putting on enough of a show to keep the general public interested in his exploits."

And as the realization came over her, Harley's mouth slowly gaped open. That he seemed so overtly concerned with his investors - that the timing of the article coincided with the virtual halfway mark of the observational period - that he seemed not at all worried about actual ramifications, but only with the attention he was getting from the public...it clicked in her head, all at once, like the sudden flash you see on a television screen when you first turn it on – furious white light followed by an electric buzz.

"Oh my God..." she started, and Arkham turned up from gazing admirably at the photograph. "_You_ called the press?" She was almost breathless, a look of devastation painted on her face.

"Well of course I did!" He said it so nonchalantly that Harley could feel the bile rise up to the back of her throat. "Three months to the day that the Joker was admitted to Arkham, and not one sighting? If the public thinks he's safe, then we'll be able to provide the resources in order for him to truly remain that way."

Harley immediately rose from her chair and turned her back to him. She didn't know whether to run from the room for fear of being ill, or turn around and abrade him once again. Maybe both, as she placed a hand over her mouth in disgust before looking over her shoulder at him.

"You..." she began, but was at such a loss for words that she had to consider what she was about to say. "You're a _monster_."

Her words were simple, but they appeared to cut the old doctor quite deeply, because his brows furrowed and his eyes seemed to disappear beneath the shadow of his glasses. "I beg your pardon?"

"You don't care about the patients in this facility _at all_! You care how many expensive books you can fit on your shelves, or how many Pomeranians you can buy your wife, but most of all..." She took a couple steps toward him and pressed her finger to the surface of his desk. "You care about your _'business'._ I've got news for you Dr. Arkham... making a business out of sick people is _sick_. I've said it before and I'll say it again," she said, chuckling in amazement at his revolting mentality. "If _anyone_ deserves to be locked up in here, it's you. You're not supposed to line your pockets while you're making people better... that's just sick."

"Tell me, Harleen." he said to her sharply, leaning in to rest his elbows upon the edge of his table. "Do you honestly think that treating the Joker will make him better? You think he's ever going to be a man, more than he is a psychopath?"

She glared back at him, unable to answer with anything but a frown for a moment, her arms crossing themselves over her chest.

After a few seconds of her silence, a patronizing scoff escaped Arkham's lips and he chuckled. "You see, that's what I thou-"

"Maybe not," she cut him off, and he gave her a displeased, albeit surprised, glance. "He'll probably always have deep-seated mental issues that no amount of treatment can cure. But he is still a _man_... he is not your meal ticket, and I will do whatever I can for him, regardless as to your little plans."

He smiled, linking his fingers into each other, a somehow sinister gesture. "How sweet. Sometimes I wonder how the Joker is responding to your very evident affection for him." He grinned a little wider. "I suppose I'll have to allow you to continue with your treatment. However, at this point, Dr. Quinzel, it should be very evident what your true purpose was up there on that roof the other day."

"Oh?" she snapped. "Enlighten me."

"Well... I mean let's face it, if it had been Kleinburg or myself up there, the photo wouldn't be anywhere near as interesting."

He chuckled, and this time, so did Harley. She'd forced on a smile and took the paper off of Arkham's desk. "Oh, I don't know about that Dr. Arkham." Harley glanced over the picture once more. "Had it been you up on that rooftop with the Joker, I'm sure the photo-op would have been just as entertaining with his hands around your neck." She turned to walk toward the door, that malicious grin still on her lips. "_I'd _have a lot less to worry about, that's for sure."

The old man was not pleased as she turned around to glance at him once more, hand on the gold handle of the heavy oak door. "Don't forget, Arkham...he does talk to me for a reason, after all. And we have a lot in common."

"Oh?" Arkham growled. "What's that?"

"We both hate you." She gave him her most charming smile, and left Arkham in his office after the door slammed - the sound of her girlish, high-pitched laughter trailing after her.


	17. Chapter 17: Sparks

"Up against the wall!" one of the brute guards hollered into the Joker's cell.

Sad as it might be, he was used to the pen-up aggression that the guards took out on the inmates at Arkham. He remembered telling Harley, once upon a time: "_You know, if you wear the pants at work, it's the exact opposite at home_." But the Joker expected that most of these fine specimens lived alone in bachelor apartments, munching on macaroni and cheese and browsing through lowbrow reading material while spending the majority of their time in the shitter, anxiously awaiting their next bowel movement.

Whatever they were consuming to maintain that girth, though, was better than what he was eating in here.

He used to eat steak, drink beer and smoke cigars... now the Joker was on the same level as these fat scumbags who were pounding on his door. He found it very hard to respect anyone who lived like that. He didn't have to put up with it, but he did, and when he asked himself why, he did his best to ignore the answer. _Why stay? Why stay, when it would be __**soooo**_ _easy to kill them with a plastic spoon and walk out the front door?_ that sickly voice in his head chimed out.

The guard called to him again. "I said get your crazy ass up against the wall!"

The Joker only sleeved the thick plastic spoon he'd been pushing his food around with, and continued to ignore him.

It was Saturday, which was usually the longest day of the week for most of the inmates in Arkham. Most of the doctors had the day off, which meant a vast majority of the criminals confined within this concrete block went the entire day without saying a word, unless they had a tendency to talk to themselves. Spending the entire day alone, in your cell, and often in the dark was not the best way to nurture an ill mind.

The Joker wasn't an exception to this rule. Harley would only come around on the weekends if the Joker caused trouble... which was turning into most weekends. She had volunteered to come in for a couple hours on Saturday and Sunday, but Dr. Arkham had protested. "Try not to worry, Dr. Quinzel. I'm sure the Joker is having a wonderful time alone in that head of his. Certainly if things get out of hand, we can handle it," he'd explained to her during their preliminaries.

"Okay," the guard growled, "we're going to count to three, and then we're coming in there with doctors and sedatives. Is that what you want?"

The Joker turned to glare at him through the small barred window cut into the steel door. These big oafs hid behind their syringes and their labcoats. It made his blood boil.

"One!" The guard counted and began pushing open the door. The Joker slid his chapped fingertips under the food tray's far side so that the guard couldn't see. "Two!" From the sleeve he had just stashed the plastic spoon he let the utensil fall back into his palm. He caressed it, trying desperately to remember what it felt like to squeeze the handle of his favorite knife. Surprisingly not as difficult a feat as he thought.

The guard pushed into his room, and though the doctors could be heard coming up behind him, the Joker couldn't help himself. Just as the security guard made into into his cell, the Joker sprung, his form moving from still and calm to radical and violent at a moment's notice.

"THREE!" The Joker's excited voice was followed by maniacal laughter, and with a savage, jagged twist he flung the tray at the guard, who fell back against the door. It slammed shut before the doctors standing by could react. The rotund guard stumbled, his back slumping down to the floor.

The Joker palmed his flabby face and squeezed the sides of his jaw so hard they either shattered or sprang open in an attempt to scream. "You know, it's been a long day. I'm not much in the mood for dinner, but you need to maintain your weight class!" Again the laughter followed. With the spoon firmly gripped in his free hand, that high-pitched laughter became a sinister growl. "Bottoms up."

And immediately he stuffed the thick plastic spoon down the throat of the struggling security guard. Cupping his hands over the guard's mouth and nose, sealing them shut, the Joker continued to laugh as tears collected in the eyes of the guard, slowly forced to swallow the jagged utensil.

"Now! The next time you decide you're going to throw some weight around...no pun intended," the Joker said, using his free hand to pat the gut of the suffering guard, "what are you going to do, huh?" He peered up to the tiny barred window on the door. "And I might add, if you don't hurry up and swallow that thing, you're going to suffocate, and then there won't be a next ti..."

But before he could finish his sentence, he felt a sharp pain pierce his neck. With a frustrated grunt he slid off the security guard and pushed himself hastily across the floor to press his back up against the wall of his cell. The sweating guard rolled over and vomited before coughing up the spoon, taking deep, labored breaths.

The Joker was conscious only long enough to see Dr. Jeremiah Arkham enter the room. In his spindly hand was a thin copper tube, flipping playfully over his knuckles before it landed back in his palm. He only got a quick look at it before he tore a small dart from his neck.

"Harley's sweeter-than-honey techniques aren't working with you," Arkham said bluntly, a sinister grin playing on his lips as he crouched down next to the madman who was quickly fading into unconsciousness "Now we're going to do it my way."

And then he blacked out.

# # # # # # #

A few times a week, Harley hit the gym. But unlike most, Harley went to the kind of gym that few would ever set foot in. Although she hardly seemed the type with her librarian's sense of style and her doctorate in psychology, in her youth Harley had been an Olympic level gymnast. She hadn't chosen to make her athleticism a career choice (as most gymnasts' careers are over by the age of 20), opting to use her athletic skills to apply for a scholarship to Gotham University. Gymnastics was a means to an end for Harley, but a few times a week, she used it to stay sane in a world of insanity.

With her back arched and her arms stretched up over her head, she peered toward the vault at the end of a twenty-foot track. Her fitted black bodysuit didn't feel as good as it had ten years prior, but Harley acknowledged she wasn't a kid anymore. Next year she would be thirty-one... which was as close as she wanted to get to forty.

Taking a few bounding strides she leapt onto the vault, careened into the air, and twisted her body into a spin before taking a firm hold of the higher of the uneven bars. Spinning from one bar to the next, feeling the chalk in between each of her fingers, allowing her body to do what came naturally - it was usually enough to drown out the thoughts that raced through her mind.

Today was not the same. Somewhere in the back of her head, the Joker's words were echoing.

"_Good, bad. Heroes, villains... these words are subjective. Good guys turn into bad guys depending on your perspective. The men who lock people up in here, this is their version of justice? They got crooked cops running all around Gotham who will change their tune for a little bit of money - guards sworn to guide and serve the mentally ill - who would take a billy club to anyone who looked at them the wrong way, Doctors who would rather torture than treat...and these are the people who are supposed to protect you?" _

As she turned to grasp the lower bar, she didn't know if it was the air whipping into her face which brought tears to her eyes, or something else entirely. Pulling herself up, she held her body parallel to the ground before rocking her legs down and into another spin, arching up onto the upper bar once again. His words continued to rush through her head as she moved frantically, as if trying to outrun them.

"_And if these are the good guys, what about the bad guys?_ _Well, then maybe you need to consider that the 'bad guys' are not actually so bad at all. See, those good guys..._those _guys, they act on urges like greed, or lust, or anger...the good guys shed their stripes for opportunity. They ask, 'what can I get out of it?'_. _I've never asked myself that question. I do the things I've done... quite frankly, because they need doing._"

When she'd heard them originally, his words had stopped her dead in her tracks. It seemed they'd done the same thing just now.

"Harleen?" someone called out to her.

There she was, hanging from the uneven bars, her eyes blank and out of focus. The Joker's words had flooded her mind to the point where the only thing that seemed that it was worth holding on to was the felted bar that her chalky hands were currently gripping. But she snapped out of it upon hearing her name once again. "Harleen?" a young girl asked. Letting go, Harley dropped gracefully down to the floor a couple feet beneath her, landing on both feet. "You okay? You really zoned out there for a moment."

"I did... you need the bars?" she asked in a kind of empty way.

"No, no... I was told to come out here and get you. Your cell phone has been ringing in your locker for the past five minutes and, you know, considering your job... we figured it might be something important."

Most of the people here knew that Harley's work was centered around emergencies; she'd told everyone she worked at a hospital. But, since the article in the Gotham Times, everyone seemed convinced that Harley had one of the most important jobs in the city.

Hearing that her phone was ringing over and over again was enough to stir her from her contemplation and start off toward the change room. "Thanks," Harley said with a meek, albeit polite smile. There was a brief and distinct sense of panic that washed over her.

As Harley made her way to the locker room she heard her phone still ringing, and sighed. Contrary to what the Joker might believe, she did have a social life... at least, that was what she tried to tell herself. Lifting the lock on her locker, she pulled her cellular phone from her gym bag and gazed at the display. There was a sense of relief when she saw it was Molly, calling from her own private number. Maybe she did have a social life after all.

"Hey Molly, what's up?" Harley asked as she carefully stripped out of a leotard, sandwiching the phone between her ear and her bare shoulder.

"Oh thank God you picked up! Are you at work today?" Molly was whispering in a hushed, terror-stricken tone.

The panic returned. Harley was beginning to feel like she had been washed ashore by a wave only to be sucked back out again. "No, I'm not. What's happened?" she asked sternly, but worry hung heavily over her question. The Joker was bored on a Saturday and probably up to his usual tricks.

"Harl, you need to come quick. The Joker attacked a guard today... but..."

"It was only a matter of time..." Harley muttered to herself, sliding on a pair of jeans and buttoning the fly.

"Well, the damn fool pushed his way into his cell, and Arkham had to hit Joker with a blow dart to restrain him," Molly explained,halfway between irritated and shocked.

It didn't take long to remember what she'd seen the other day in Arkham's office, when he'd been lecturing her on the readership of the Gotham Times...that thin metal object that she had mistaken as a pen. Thinking back, she realized that Arkham always carried it in the breast pocket of his labcoat, and now she knew why. Harley realized it wasn't so far-fetched that he would use a dart on the Joker. If he was in one of his moods, you couldn't get near him.

"That's not the fucked-up part, Harl."

Harley strained to think of what could be worse. She thought of all the crazy things Arkham would do to a patient, as if she was watching a poorly-devised horror movie. Harley could almost guess what was going to happen next. "Where is he?" she asked, monotone. It must have frightened Molly, because for a few seconds afterward, she was dead silent.

"Arkham took him down to the basement," Molly started. "None of the instrumentation works down there anymore... but Arkham had a couple orderlies and Dr. Shelby go down with him."

"Dr. Shelby?" Harley asked. She'd never heard of him before, which was strange, since she was relatively familiar with all the doctors who sat on the board and who worked at the facility.

"Dr. Shelby is an electroshock technician. He's damn near eighty years old. If Arkham's got a dinosaur machine down there... Shelby knows how to use it, and he's just as sick as Arkham is, which means they're going to use it even if they know they shouldn't."

Harley drew a deep and calming breath through her nose, and there was a release when she let it out again. Inside, the tiny, screaming voice went silent, ad the alarms ringing off inside her head ceased. Harley closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she felt that sense of power and confidence that comes from knowing exactly what to do.

"Five minutes," was all she said, before Molly head a soft click and a dial tone.

# # # # # # # #

Harley barreled down the highway. Her knuckles gleamed white as she gripped the steering wheel, only removing her right hand once every so often to shift the car into its required gear.

She couldn't remember another time where she had been this angry. Arkham Asylum was just an extension of the prison system rather than a facility for healing. These men had no intention on helping anyone but themselves. They had one intention, and that was silence. They housed criminals and the only currency they wanted as payment was peace and quiet; and they would do whatever they needed to in order to get it. Sit down, shut up, and maybe... just _maybe, _you'd die in there only as crazy as you'd been when you went in, only older.

As she sped through the city and up over one of the many bridges that surrounded Arkham and the Narrows, she was going over all the nasty things she could say to him. She slid the sides of her tongue against her teeth, as if sharpening a blade. Dr. Arkham would hear what she had to say as clearly as Molly could hear the tires of her car screeching into the parking lot. She'd been waiting for Harley at the door, and bounced from one foot to the other in an attempt to keep herself warm. Late autumn had turned into early winter, but Harley didn't feel the cold as she slammed the door of her car and plodded up the stairs and through the large double doors.

There was at once a moment of anger that filled her: failure and sympathy fed that anger and that turned her usual soft gaze into a villainous glare. Her normally bright blue irises went dark as slate. She felt confidence wash up her spine, rage filling the muscles of her back, and when she stalked through the front corridor, she was not the soft spoken doctor anymore. She was a force. Nothing was delicate about her movement, and she did not hesitate, she did not walk or even stride throughout the large building - she sprinted.

Molly waved a security pass over a locked door for Harley, allowing her past the nurse's station. "They took him down there just about ten minutes ago. You'd better hurry."

But Harley didn't hear her. Her poisonous heartbeat pounded in her ears, the muscles in her thighs twitching and tightening with every stride. She moved down the hall like a locomotive: mechanical, unstoppable, strong as iron. Sweat collected at her brow, but even the air that had moved passed her lent little relief as she pushed open the door to a stairwell that curled down and around an old iron support beam. They were hardly enough of an obstacle to interrupt her speed, pouring over them two at a time.

The basement to Arkham looked like it had been neglected for years. Intermittent lights flickered softly along the corridors, but for the most part it was dark. The place was a maze - hallways stretching beyond corners, endless rooms laid out with brick walls, all of them filled with old psychiatric instruments, some of them absolutely terrifying. Most of the rooms came with a window that extended into the hallway to allow for an audience view. As she continued to run past, she could feel the bile rise up her throat.

There had been a point in time where the psychiatric treatment of patients was torture, and most of the men who were delivering that torture were the type who liked to watch. Over time, and certainly more recently, Harley became more and more aware that Dr. Arkham was this type of man. She imagined his skinny form, hovering over patients, watching them jostle this way and that, in fear and madness.

It wasn't long before she turned a corner and spied a room at the end of the hall in active use. Light from the viewing window flooded into the hallway, and the people within cast terrifying oblong shadows against the floor. Harley moved until she close enough to peer inside.

The Joker was bound with leather straps to an aluminum operating table, a black, misshapen mouthguard placed between his teeth. He was unconscious and convulsing irregularly from the electricity being applied to his head.

Dr. Arkham stood at the Joker's feet, which were covered it what looked to be rubber boots, holding him firmly by the ankles. Another doctor was standing by his head, operating the device that was conveying the electric shock, and yet another doctor, who Harley assumed was the decrepit Dr. Shelby, was delivering the "_treatment"_ from a control panel not far away.

But the most disturbing part in all of this was the Joker himself. His eyes were sealed shut, so tightly that the tiny wrinkles that had a habit of forming between his eyebrows now folded over one another. His hands were balled into white-knuckled fists. Harley could already see the pools of blood in the webbing of his hands as his fingernails pierced his through his palm. His yellow teeth bit down on the mouth guard with such ferocity that his gums had begun to bleed, leaving dark splattered stains along the plastic.

Her fists pounded up against the glass so hard she thought it might shatter, and secretly hoped that it would. "Arkham! Stop!" she screamed at him, her fists continuously pounding.

After a few moments, all three doctors turned to look out into the hallway. The three immediately dropped everything they were doing, aborting the shock therapy.

"Arkham you sick _fuck_!" Harley growled to him, pulling the door open so fast that it rounded its hinge and flattened hard against the wall. "You _yellow-bellied son-of-a-bitch_! Right behind my back where you _knew_, _or _at least _thought_, I wouldn't catch you! You might own this facility, but in no way do you have the authority to use this out-of-date technique and a potentially _lethal _machine on a patient that is not a diagnosed schizophrenic, or depressive! Particularly without the consent of both the patient and his secondary therapist."

She moved right up to him. Although she was no where near his six-foot-three stature, her ferocious behavior moved the doctor to take a step back. "What the _hell _are you thinking?"

"Young lady, I would hold your tongue if you want to keep work..." Arkham started, but Harley had no problem cutting him off right now.

"You don't have the guts to fire me! Especially after this! Maybe the wack-job police won't be interested to know that you're abusing patients, but Commissioner Gordon will, and certainly the _press_ will." When she said it, well... the doctor's face dropped so quickly it might have appeared as if he was having a stroke. "Some people have family in here! Loved ones! You think they're going to like hearing that Doctor Arkham is zapping the crazies to kingdom come?"

Maybe threatening Dr. Arkham wasn't the best idea, but Harley had hit him where it had hurt: the press. If the press got word that inmates and patients were being abused at Arkham Asylum, his board would pull all his funding, and he'd have to sell that beautiful mansion in the Palisades that he never saw. Things like that were important to him.

Things like that weren't important to Harley anymore.

"Don't threaten me, Harley."

"I'll threaten you all I like...you have _nothing_ to hold against me," she said, her arm sweeping back to point at the Joker who, although breathing, was very unconscious. "I've treated even your darkest, most evil patient with nothing but respect. With intention to heal him. You cannot do _anything_ to me! There will be no court to convict me, no ruling to have my license revoked. Nothing!" Harley was so heated, so ravenous that she was nearly screaming at him. She turned suddenly to stop the other doctors who had begun to move the gurney that the Joker was limply laying across. "Don't touch him!" she ordered, and they lifted their hands away like children who'd touched a very hot stove.

"Harley, my dear, you're taking this all too seriously." Arkham put on his most soothing tone, the same he'd use on an out-of-control patient. "This is a tried and true psychiatric technique used on violent offenders. They turn into big kittens..." His smile was so large, and so fake that for a split second Harley envisioned sinking her fingernails into his flesh and ripping those disgusting lips right off his face.

"_Too _seriously?" she asked and then turned around to look at the old doctor again. "_Too seriously!_ You want him to be a kitten, why not just give him a fucking lobotomy while you're at it? This is a _human_ _being_." She spat at him, twisting her body and pointing back to the Joker as he lay upon the table. "No matter how much I'm sure you'd like to refute that, no matter how ill he is, no matter how many people he's killed – this is a life! If you believe that you're superior enough to take that life, or harm that life in any way, then _you're_ the one who should be strapped down on that table."

For a moment the room was deadly quiet. Dr. Arkham and Dr. Quinzel stared at each other for so long and so hard that the tension in between them could have shattered them both into a million pieces. But even through all that tension, Harley was the first to speak.

"When you began your work as a doctor, you took an oath to protect life beyond any means – '_first, do no harm_.' Sound familiar?" Scoffing loudly, she turned and gripped the handle at the end of the stainless steel table where the Joker's limp body was strapped. "Maybe I'm young and naïve...but I'm sure if the Joker was conscious right now, no matter how heartless you believe him to be; he'd be thanking me..." she said softly, and turned her back to the old doctor.

When she spoke next, her voice had moved from a string of concerned emotions to flat, dispassionate sound, that bellowed from her diaphragm and made her nostrils flare. "If you wish your repetition pertaining to the Joker as squeaky clean as possible... then you will immediately sign over the rights as his primary psychiatrist to me."

"Harleen, that's preposterous. I'm the primary psychiatrist for all of the patients in this facility," he argued back, watching as she motioned the two other doctors away from the gurney.

Heaving her weight against the wheeled table, she moved to push it out of the room. "Not anymore you're not. I want the required paperwork on my desk within three days. If it's not there, I _am_ going to the press." Her tone was the same, but when she turned to see Arkham's response, her face was certainly different. Cold steely eyes stared back at him, and the corners of her lips were turned up into the darkest, most evil grin the doctor had ever seen outside the Joker's. "So do what you have to. Talk to your board and fess up to your gaffe, because clearly, you're not to be trusted making the decisions for this particular patient. Not anymore."

He was evidently eager to get her out of the room, since he nodded obediently as he straightened his lab coat. Without another word she wheeled the Joker from the room and down the hall to the freight elevator.

Once upstairs she had a couple of orderlies help her to move him back onto his bed and provide her with enough bandages and antiseptic to treat his superficial wounds. "Jesus Christ, what the hell happened to him?" one of them asked. His tone wasn't sympathetic, but more surprised. If a doctor was going to treat a patient this severely, they would usually clean them up first.

She crossed her arms over her chest as the orderlies placed him down on his bed. "Dr. Arkham," she muttered, and they seemed to understand.


	18. Chapter 18: Fail

"Harley, relax..." Molly pleaded, but her calm voice lent little comfort. Harley looked severely out of sorts as she stalked up and down the length of the Joker's cell in a lab coat and blue jeans, hand cupped thoughtfully around her chin. She watched as an additional nurse and an orderly worked feverishly at the Joker's bedside.

"What was I _doing_?" she asked herself, her tone uneasy, her fidgeting hands wringing around each other impatiently before burying themselves into her dark hair. She gazed helplessly with pitiful eyes around the muted landscape of the room, but once every so often, they would turn to him – he seemed to be the only one in the room who could hold her attention for more than a few seconds. "I'm always here on Saturday. I'm _always_ here."

"But you're not supposed to be. The Joker isn't a seven-days-a-week job. You can't let yourself get too attached," Molly pleaded with her, but the doctor just continued to move across the room, before turning on her heels and retreating to the other side again.

Getting him up to the room had been the easy part, but once he'd arrived there she had begun to shake and hyperventilate. A couple of nurses had turned their attention to her when they'd noticed, but she had waved them back toward the one who was truly injured. She was consumed by an overwhelming fear that he would die, and of what would happen to her should he die. The logical part of her mind had contested, called out to her that he would be fine, that people underwent modern shock therapy all the time... but there was an irrational fear that confounded her, turned her into a useless ball of flesh. There he was, being removed from a gurney, and she... she was filled with the inadequacies that he'd tried so desperately to leech from her.

"Harley..." Molly said again, but there came no response, appearing lost in her own mind. "Harley!" she screamed.

Harley, the nurse, and the orderly all stopped, looking up at the woman's outcry. Pointing at the two who had helped place the Joker back onto his own bed, Molly gestured for them to leave. The nurse in her polished white uniform hung her head, and peered apologetically at Dr. Quinzel as she left the room, the orderly following after her quietly.

"Alright, now girl, what has gotten into you?" Her tone was significantly calmer, but still held onto a twinge of aggression. "I get it, alright... you feel guilty. Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't. The main thing is he's alive. But you need to get it through your thick head...this man doesn't deserve your sympathy, or your worry. Had Dr. Arkham not taken control of the Joker when he did, Jerry would be dealing with a lot more than just a few stitches in the back of his throat."

"It's not that..."

"Then what the hell is it?" Molly had barked back. "You're lucky the Board of Directors isn't watching you closer, because from where I'm standing... you've lost your objectivity on this case."

She was right. Harley cared too deeply about the fate of the Joker. She wondered for a moment if anyone had ever come to his rescue. Maybe that was the problem.

"You think he's ever had a soul to protect him? You think anyone's ever stood up for the man that he is... and not simply disregarded him because of the problems that he has?" The emotion was evident in her voice as she tried to explain her actions.

"Harley... _think _about what you're saying," Molly pleaded with her again, sucking her lips in between her teeth.

"If anything has left me jaded, it's the lack of sincerity that so-called doctor has in his heart. But we're all part of the same monster. I got into this business because I wanted to help people heal. He couldn't have gotten into this field for any other reason. If I'm not careful, Jeremiah Arkham will turn me into the same monster... I won't stand for that." Her small hands balled into adamant fists as the spoke, her face brandishing the disgust she felt for Arkham.

Molly stretched her arms out in an exaggerated shrug. "I can't say I disagree with you there, Harl. But now isn't the time to let yourself get emotional." Leaning forward, her friend stretched out to take hold of Harley's shoulders, giving her a gentle shake. "You're going to pull your head out of your ass, you're going to take a deep breath, and you're going you be his fucking doctor. You're going to drug him up, you're going to go home and have a shower, and then you're going to get your ass back here and start filling out incident paperwork like you were born to do it. Yes?"

Harley's expression moved from panicked to subdued, more serious. Nodding again, she took a deep breath. "I got this...don't worry."

"Good." Molly said firmly before turning back toward the door. "I'll be downstairs if you need anything." She offered her a weak smile and a reassuring nod before quietly closing the door behind her.

The gentle but ominous click that followed the deadbolt lock gave a solemn and lonely feeling to the room. Harley stood by the door for a few moments, watching him. Orderlies had placed a cart full of medical supplies next to his bed: bandages, gauze, sterile water, pain killers, sedatives, clean towels, stitching needles, the works.

Slowly, she made her way to his bedside, hovering over him. The space of concern in between her eyebrows slimmed at the sight of him... the smell of him - burnt hair and blood, bruises and frazzled hair. All life appeared to have been sucked out of him, as if it hardly belonged to him at all.

Carefully sitting on the edge of the bed beside him, the innocent part of her pulled away, thinking that maybe if she'd nudged him just the slightest bit, he would rouse. Or maybe... maybe he was just trying to scare her, and would spring out at her at any moment with a diabolical laugh. But when the mattress adjusted to her weight and he didn't flinch in any way, she had to swallow the knot in her throat just to breathe.

She'd give anything if he just woke up...she didn't care of he was yelling and screaming, threatening her to within an inch of her life. _Just wake up_... she said to herself, but her failure as his therapist seemed to ring out as loudly as the silence in the room.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, she reached down, both of her tiny hands wrapping around one of his own - and let out a small gasp as her hands came away speckled with blood. She turned over his palm. There were still lacerations in his hands, most likely from his fists balling so tightly that his jagged fingernails had broken through the skin.

There was a moment when she looked at his face again, the large black mouthguard still lodged within it. She hesitated, but after another deep breath, she adjusted to band-aid mentality and quickly reached up to pull it out. As if it had been holding back a river, blood gushed from the corners of his mouth, filling in the arches of his scar with the bright red color they'd been when she first set eyes on him.

She stood up and turned, throwing the crimson mouth guard across the room, before gripping big chunks of her hair with her bloodied hands. Her delicate shoulders lifted when she inhaled, leaning her head back to look at the ceiling, mind swirling with all the possible repercussions of Arkham's actions. When he awoke, would he trust any of them again? Would he trust her? Would he talk at all?

And then, as if from the back of her mind, there was a voice, one that pleaded with her to stop. Upon hearing voices, any therapist will tell you that it's a reflection of one's own voice - the adaptive unconscious guiding you through turmoil. But this voice... the voice that told her to buckle down and focus didn't resemble her own, or even Molly's.

It sounded like the Joker's.

Calm washed over her arching brows. Harley didn't want to take the time to consider her apprehension over hearing the Joker's own voice in her mind. She used it. She whisked around and turned to seat herself back on the Joker's bedside.

She reached for a small bottle of secobarbinal, pierced the bottle with a syringe, and pulled back on the plunger. Next, she took hold of a rubber tourniquet, and held the blood flow on his left arm just long enough to find the vein, before easily piercing it and administering the drug.  
Her movements were almost methodical, and had any been watching her they might have been surprised at her medical prowess. In reality, psychiatrists often worked directly with a patient's injuries. But now, as she bandaged his hands, used a warm cloth to clean the caked blood from his scar, pushed back his hair, and rested a cool towel to his forehead... something about these actions soothed her.

Sitting beside him, she picked up his hand in her own, stroking the back of it. Maybe she hadn't failed him just as his doctor, but as his friend...

"Oh, Joker..." And her grip on his large callused hand tightened. Although she was able to hold back on what otherwise would have been a large sob, keeping the tears from streaking down her face was impossible. She used her free hand to wipe her cheek, sniffling. "I'm so sorry..."

# # # # # #

"Harley..._Quin_..." he muttered in his drug-induced stupor. His head slowly rolled back and forth upon the pillow as if it was part of a song. "Harley..._Quin_..."

The Joker had been out for several hours, and now Harley sat at the table in his cell, the entire surface covered with pages upon pages of paperwork that she'd been diligently filling out over the last few hours. Most of it was security clearance, along with health and safety documentation. But now it could have been miles away. Now the only thing in the room that had her undivided attention was him, and his whispering voice.

She shot up out of the chair and took the couple steps over to his bedside. His eyes were only opened into thin slits, and they seemed to wander about the room. Carefully she sat on the very edge of the squeaky mattress. As soon as she did, Harley felt that same sense of comfort that used to warm her when she was a child. Having someone sit on the edge of your bed felt soothing, as though you were protected in some way.

She leaned over to pull a small pre-wrapped package from the first aid cart. "Heya, Daddy-o," she said affectionately, and smiled when he responded by reaching up for the voice. Immediately she took his one hand in one of hers and brought it back down.

She scanned over him, moving over a mental checklist as her eyes flashed from his hand - _motor skills intact_ - to the way his dark irises seemed to dart over her face from barely opened eyes - _able to establish eye contact_. He was very groggy, but beyond that, he looked exactly how she had expected him to... which wasn't very good, to say the least, but not nearly as bad as she had been fearing.

He groaned and shifted on his back, his eyes coming a bit more into wakefulness. "You smell like baby powder... and black licorice," he said very simply, though slowly, as if there was some delay from his brain to his mouth – that might not have been a bad thing. "I like black licorice."

From the plastic-wrapped package she'd scooped up off the first aid cart, she ripped out a small gauze-covered smelling salt and popped it open. "Well, I hope you feel the same way about ammonia carbonate," she said, wincing as she held the salt up to his face.

The Joker's dark eyes immediately sprang open and he attempted in vain to leap from the bed, before realizing that he was physically incapable. His movements were slow and labored, like when you wake up in the middle of the night to the dead weight of a numb appendage. Groaning heavily, he pressed his free hand against his forehead. "Ugh... what happened?"

Harley stood up from his bed and stepped over the table, pouring a glass of water from a pitcher she had kept there. "Well, before or after Dr. Arkham put you into electroshock therapy after you nearly killed a guard?"

Before she had even finished the question, his trademark roguish smile spread across his jagged mouth. "Oops."

"Oops?" She sighed heavily when she plunked herself back down on the mattress. "You underestimate Jeremiah Arkham. You really do. He shot you with his little blow-dart gun and then zapped you nearly all the way to kingdom come. But, I suppose it's a good thing you don't remember any of it."

He shook his head. "Not a damn thing." He chuckled and then looked at the bandaging on his hands, smacking his lips a couple times in displeasure. "I taste blood."

Nodding, Harley peered down at the glass of water. "Yeah, you bit down on your mouth guard pretty hard. Here." She took ahold of his wrist with one hand, helping to pull him up into a sitting position. "Just drink this and lay back down," she instructed, handing off the glass into his wrapped hand and supporting him by keeping an arm wrapped around his back.

After he gulped down a few mouthfuls of water, he swirled one around in his mouth to rid himself of most of the dried blood. With a solemn nod, she helped him back into his supine positioning before reaching over to place the glass on the table top. He sighed when she turned to look back over to him. Harley's look of concern would not dissuade his curiosity, and she knew it. Even in this mentally clouded state of his, she knew it wouldn't be long until he asked more and more questions.

"What happened after that?" he croaked.

_Well... that didn't take very long._ She leaned over to examine his temples, where the electrodes had come into contact with his head. His eyes looked up to scan her face, though she remained otherwise engaged for a moment longer.

"Well... after that," she started, in the detached way she had when she was focusing on something else. Harley scanned him for any hidden injuries the shock might have caused in a strangely comforting way - tilting his head this way and that, gently rifling her fingertips through his hair and over she scalp to check for any scabbing. She didn't notice the way his eyes appeared to half-lid in relaxation as she gently pulled her fingernails over his scalp, or the way he tried glancing down her blouse during her tender if routine examination. "After that... well, that's a little difficult. I wasn't here when he did this, Joker. You can't possibly think I would have given the thumbs-up to something like that."

"No, no... I know you wouldn't."

"Good," came a large sigh of relief from her side as she sat back again. "But the next time you see you see Molly - the day-shift head nurse - you owe her a thank you."

"Oh yeah?"

"Mmhm." Harley nodded with an appreciative smile. "Well, no... the idea of you showing any amount of appreciation is strange and unnatural, but I think you should at least be thankful. You're lucky she has my personal phone number. She called me up as soon as the heard what you'd done and I rushed over."

"Hmph..." He brought his arms up behind his head, still groggily staring up at the ceiling. "She's the one that looks like Nia Long in the Nineties?" he asked, then gestured a halo around his head. Harley couldn't help but chuckle at the comparison. Molly did have large hair, and sported a Mighty Mouse attitude.

"Yeah, I suppose she kind of does." Nodding her head a couple times, she leaned her elbows on her knees. She'd gone home for a couple hours while the Joker had been sleeping, and climbed into a cold shower before getting changed into more work-appropriate fare than her Saturday jeans. Wearing a navy skirt and a cream ivory gigot sleeve blouse with a low button, she appeared almost overtly professional. There was a navy suit jacket draped over the back of the aluminum chair, but with two people in the small room, it was easily warm enough.

"Then what happened?" he egged her on, as if he was a child begging a parent into telling them a frightening bedtime story.

"Well..." She took her elbows off her knees, crossing her legs and leaning back on her hands. He looked her over as she spoke, arched over him, her hands supporting herself on the opposite side of his thighs from where she sat. If he'd had the energy to bend at the knees he would have provided her the perfect back rest. "I found Arkham down in the basement with you, and laid into him pretty good. Called him a yellow-bellied-son-of-a-bitch.." She chuckled.

The Joker only smiled, weakly. "Yellow bellied..." he scoffed and continued to peer up at her lethargic eyes. "Nice..." It wasn't really. Sounded like something out of a Fifties movie, before people had been allowed to swear on film.

"Yeah well..." Blushing, she shook her head. "I called him an asshole too."

"Atta girl..."

"Well, he deserved it. The more I think about it, the more I find that there are a lot of bad guys out there masquerading as the good guys." Pulling her chin in toward her chest for a moment, she took on a very cynical expression. "Somewhere along the line, making money became more important than treating sick people...when I started working here, I suppose I automatically assumed, you open a hospital because you care about people... not about investments, and press, and attention."

A warm feeling moved up her arm, and when she turned back to look over at him he appeared very much his normal self again, except his bandaged hand was trailing up the silky sleeve of her shirt. "Do you find yourself among the disenchanted?" he asked in a sing-song voice, before his eyes lazily trailed up the seam of her sleeve, over the large ruffled collar on her shoulder, creating the impression that he was taking in each and every one of her facial features before his eyes locked back on hers.

Taken aback for a moment, his eyes widened, then squinted, as if it strained his vision to see her. "Y'know... you'd be an absolute knockout if you were blond." He raised his brows and then struggled to sit up.

Shaking her head in mild amusement, she twisted her body, placing both hands against his chest to stop him from moving. "No, no, no... lay down," she gently ordered him, and he landed with a flop down on the mattress. "I used to be blond in college..."

"Oh, well, you know..." he started, his voice a little higher then it usually was. "Gentlemen prefer blonds."

"Ah, yes, but they marry brunettes," Harley explained, reaching behind him to fluff his pillow. "Besides, what would you know about anything a _gentleman _would prefer? Aren't you the one who was blatantly clear about his sexual attraction to his slightly boring but oh-so-intelligent quick-witted therapist?"

"Is that out of the ordinary?" he asked and bit his bottom lip.

"No, it's called transference – it happens all the time."

"Hmm.." He arched his neck one way and then the other, several of the small little bones within it, popping under pressure. "What's the opposite of transference? You know..." He motioned in between the two of them with his right hand as he used the walls behind the pillow to prop his back up. "...when the therapist falls in love with the patient?"

"Joker..." she scolded him when she saw him attempt to sit up, but he waved her off. He used his hand to push some of his hair out of his face and then motioned for her to tell him. Rolling her eyes and heaving a heavy sigh, she shook her head. "It's called counter-transference, and it's considerably more rare."

"I'd like to place an order for some of that," he said, settling himself into his newly seated position and taking a deep breath, the scent of ammonia still lingering in his nose.

"Arkham says I'm too affectionate with you already. I suppose he thinks that I'm too nice to you, and I let you get away with too much." She shrugged and looked down to inspect her fingernails, taking notice of the fact that although his hand no longer moved along her arm, his other hand lingered very close to her thigh. Harley cleared her throat and crossed her legs in the opposite direction. "But he's probably right... I am too nice to you."

"Aw, _c'mon_!" the Joker called out, rolling his eyes. "How easy would it be to just tell Arkham I lacked maternal love as a child?" Lifting his hands, it exposed the bandaging to her once again. "I'd say a good example of that would be you patching me up at my bedside, waiting until..." He craned his back to look at the clock covered in it's safety plastic shell. "Two in the morning, for me to wake up from a drug-induced stupor."

He seemed to gasp and then bit down on his bottom lip. "Admit it..." he quipped jovially, before winking. "You're in love with me, aren't you?"

"No... I'm not."

"Oh no?" he asked, his playful grin still woven across his face.

"What would make you think that I was?"

He brought a loose fist to his mouth, clearing his throat before leaning in to whisper. "Well, why exactly did you rush to save me? Why did you sit here till all hours of the morning for me to come to? And why..." Here he trailed off and looked over her face. "Why did you cry?"

Her expression fell before she turned her head sharply to look away from him. "What on Earth gave you the impression that I'd been crying?" she asked, but when she heard his displeased growl come from behind her, she cowered and turned back to gaze at him.

"If you're going to call me an idiot, call me an idiot, but don't ask questions to make me do it on my own. I know you were crying."

"And how do you know?" she snapped back at him, genuinely interested to see exactly how he planned on winning this argument. She'd cried for a few moments on the ride home, and for a couple moments after she'd returned, but nothing substantial recently, and certainly long enough for the red eyes and rosy cheeks to have subsided.

He rolled his eyes. "Because... you don't wear waterproof mascara..."

She gasped and covered her cheeks, immediately standing up to rifle through the pocket of her navy suit jacket for a pocket mirror, which she nearly lost her grip on trying to open it. He laughed as she fumbled, but not his cackling menacing laugh - one of his real ones.

She was relieved to see that there were only slight dark smudges, giving her eyes a slightly more exotic appearance. Regardless, she wiped them away and looked up at him with a frustrated glance. "You're such an asshole sometimes, you know that?"

"W_hhhh_y?" he asked her, long and drawn out, then pouted as is to make fun of her. "What are you worried about? _My _make-up used to run all the time." He cackled.

She snapped the compact shut, and stiffened her back in response to being made fun of. "I can't expect you to ever understand why." Folding her arms over her chest, she glanced down at her large, bubbly, dark blue heels, thinking they looked like they belonged more on Minny Mouse.

He looked at her for a moment and twisted his lips into a kind of contemplative pucker. She stood there, pouting, staring at her feet as one of them arched on a shapely ankle. Between the two of them it was hard to distinguish who was pouting more. It too often seemed to them that one was making fun of the other.

But, as the Joker's laughter faded, and as he saw that Harley refused to reestablish eye contact, he seemed to will his muscles from entropy and pulled his knees in to his chest, offering more of a place for her to sit. "You know, kid. You keep this up and I'm gonna start charging you by the hour."

Her resolve faded for a moment and she cracked a smile, and when she did he appeared delighted to see the break in her demeanor. "There, that's more like it. More of that, OK?" he asked her, before straining to lean over and pat the mattress where she'd been just a second ago. "C'mon, Puddin'...if you don't think I understand, then why don't you treat me like a big boy and explain it to me?"

Still pouting as she sat on the bed, she leaned over and raked her fingers through her hair. She didn't want to tell him - why would she want to tell him? The Joker was a master at using any sort of emotion to cripple the person who bore it. But the way he insisted, the way he sat there, ready to listen, watching her intently, arms wrapped around his knees – how could she refuse him?

Harley looked away from him, inhaling deeply. "I was at the gym..." she started, rolling her eyes, assuming the Joker would laugh at that image. He didn't... and when she was met with his silence, she continued. "One of the girls said she heard my phone ringing, over and over again." She shrugged her shoulders and somehow found the courage to look him in the eye. "Before that stupid article came out, I could get away with telling everyone that I worked in a hospital, but now that people know... well, I suppose my normally soothing CCR ringtone is enough to put anyone on edge."

"Creedence... nice," he commented, but she went on.

"When Molly told me what happened...not with you; I mean, I think Arkham expected you'd take out at least a couple guards while you were here. You didn't even kill the guy, he's just got a few stitches in the back of his throat."

Joker stretched his lips up to bear his teeth and inhaled to express some twisted form of empathy. "Ugh... back of the throat is a nasty place to get stitches."

She shrugged, apparently indifferent to the plight of the guard. "Whatever, the fact is that you didn't kill him...but Arkham could have killed you in that forty-year-old piece of junk he's got hiding in the basement. He wanted to hurt you, but better yet, he wanted to make me feel like a failure, and he succeeded."

"A failure?" he asked, as if that was the last thing he had expected her to say.

"Like a failure." She hung her head to wipe her face and immediately, unexpectedly, the Joker's face softened. "Your entire life is the result of people failing you. I don't know who, and I don't know because you haven't told me... but somewhere along the line, someone failed to show you the good in people." Wiping her hand across her chapped lips, she smeared a bit of the pink lipstick that was there. "The thing that really fucks me up... is that no matter how good I want to be, no matter how much good I try to do, the only way I seem to get any respect is when I'm being threatening... and I don't know, maybe I'm like you, maybe I'm just really good at being threatening." A weak chuckle escaped her throat.

She had to look away from him now, as her eyes had begun to sting, and the blood rushed back to her cheeks. "Everyone tells me there's no point in treating you, because you're so far beyond any kind of help that anyone could offer you... and they're right," she told him very matter-of-factly. "But I still didn't want to fail you... and today, I feel like I did."

There was a very long, very painful silence. In her mind she begged him to say something, but the seconds seemed to tick by without a word.

Finally she heard him take a deep breath, and he nudged her with his foot. "Don't ask me to be human..." he muttered looking down at his own feet before peering up at her. "I'm a whisper a of a man, who doesn't deserve your worry. You said yourself that I'm comprised of an idea. What happens to me doesn't rile sympathy...you can't feel bad for an _idea_. It's intangible."

She sniffled loudly and forced a laugh. "I know what you are... you're three equal parts psychopath, egotist, and malevolent force of nature. But there's still one bit of you... one tiny bit of you that's still a _man_. And that tiny bit is why I sit at your bedside until two o'clock in the morning, why I threaten Jeremiah Arkham to within an inch of losing his precious facility, and _that's_ why I cried... because I was worried. I wasn't worried about the idea... different men have the same ideas everyday, and some might even act upon them." Standing, she took her coat off the back of the chair and shrugged heavily. "I was worried that the man underneath would die... and without knowing you... really, _truly _knowing you, I would have failed - not just you... but myself as well, and I have never failed myself." Sliding the jacket back over her shoulders and straightening the lapel under her collar she began to collect the paper work she'd been working on from off the table.

He looked at his hands for a moment then back up to her. "Harley..." he whispered, but she didn't respond. He watched her for another few seconds and called out a little louder. "Harley."

"_What?_ What do you want? Want me to recite a sonnet to you? You know... if you're gonna call me an idiot..." she began to mock him, but before she could finish he'd taken a firm hold of her wrist and pulled her back toward him.

Gasping, she stopped, her face about a foot away from his. His eyes pierced her for a moment: hard, and sharp like they always had, but after a few seconds, something in the very back of his gaze melted, and as it did, Harley was sure she felt something in her heart snap, and she let out a sudden sob, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face into his shoulder.

She felt it almost as certainly as he did - his heart rate shot up rapidly, and he held his arms to the side to avoid actually touching her. After a moment, though, he sighed and gently placed his hands on her back. The weight of his arms around her sides was soothing to her.

"Don't tell anyone I did this..." she said with a gentle sob, muffled from the canvas of his white jumpsuit.

The Joker scoffed, smiling faintly. "Don't worry...if Arkham asks about the streaks of makeup on my shoulder, I'll just say I told his wife to be more careful, but she never listens. I'm sure he'll be able to relate to that."

She laughed and brought one of her hands up to wipe her face, sniffling softly.

"I'm alright..." he said, rubbing her back. "Just don't stop smiling."


	19. Chapter 19: Silver

**NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR**

_Hello everyone! I just wanted to write a brief note to everyone since it's been about a month. I want to thank everyone for helping me achieve the first milestone of 100 reviews. How exciting for me! I really love hearing everyone's feedback, and I'm going to begin trying to read other people's fanfiction as well, and submitting reviews. _

_As a display of my appreciation and affection for my AWESOME reviewers, I will offer you a "Thank You" of sorts. Expect Chapter 20 this Thursday! But for now, enjoy Chapter 19. If you've been reading, feel free to voice your opinion. I try to get back to everyone who sends me a message or a review. _

For many, the sound of keys hitting a hard surface at the end of the day was the auditory cue of a job well done, a trigger for the mental and emotional stress of the day to lift, alleviate, and disappear. It was the opposite for Harley. Dropping her keys upon the small table in the front foyer of her large apartment meant only one thing: it would be a long night before she could engage him again, twelve long hours before he would tell her a joke, twelve hours until she'd sit across from him and they'd continue their innuendo latent, intricate, mental banter.

To anyone else, they were just talking nonsense, shooting the breeze. But to the two of them, every conversation had a deeper meaning – as multifaceted as a well-cut diamond.

Over the last few months, Harley and Joker had created their own code, their own language; a distinct way of talking that was far beyond the depths of any other conversation that Harley ever had. So when she came home at the end of the night, there was something lonely about the sound of her keys hitting the small table. That sound just told her: _it's twelve hours until you live again. _

The feeling was akin to a teenager sneaking into the house past curfew: sure, you were home, but you didn't really want to be there anyway.

She kept the lights off. Harley lived in a luxury high-rise in Gotham's upscale downtown district. Much like the other skyscrapers in the area, it was an enormous glass edifice, seemingly covered in a sheet of silver. There was nothing but windows. No balconies - only these lofty floor-to-ceiling windows that made Harley feel like she was some endangered bird, creating a nest precariously perched on the edge of a cliff. How anyone could feel safe so close to a sheer drop was beyond her.

Those windows let in a lot of city light... and with her days spent floating about the halls of windowless Arkham Asylum, it was rare that Harley would catch a glimpse of pure sunlight – unless the sun was rising or setting, but this close to the brink of winter, she was lucky if she saw the sun at all. It was enough to put anyone into a severe vitamin D deficiency.

With a white neon glow radiating from outside and the light beaming out of her refrigerator, she was easily able to navigate around the layout of her apartment. In her stark white kitchen, she peered into the contents of her fridge. Mostly condiments, a couple bottles of white wine chilling on their sides, copious amounts of plastic water bottles, large quantities of fruit, and tall, glistening green bottles of carbonated mineral water.

She took one of those green bottles and snapped the sealed golden top, then pulled a glass down from a cupboard and filled it with ice, pouring the shimmering, silvery liquid over top of it. It fizzled and popped for a moment, and as she watched the bubbles disappear one by one, she felt a very cool breeze pass over her.

Harley's father used to joke with her that if you got a chill, it was someone walking over your grave. But this chill made her stomach turn, and was followed by a very evident feeling of familiarity, impossible to disregard.

Her eyebrows furrowing, she closed the fridge and turned a harsh gaze upon the massive windows in her living room.

His figure was stern, unmoving, wide. His cape seemed to engulf him and swept in with the winter wind. Backlit in neon, he stood in a silhouette, his features indistinguishable, save for the peaks of graphite bat ears carved into the face mask that covered everything but his eyes and jaw. Somehow, he'd slid the window open and managed to enter from the perfectly flat surface outside. He'd appeared in much the same way a snake appears: suddenly and uninvited.

"Jesus Christ!" she called out, dropping the green glass bottle which shattered into a thousand pieces on the floor.

The sound was like a firing pistol, and when they heard it, both parties immediately started moving. He vaulted over the sectional sofa in her living room while she took off running toward her bedroom in a cartoonish display, slipping on water and glass as she skidded across the floor. She could hear the sound of his sweeping cape as he came after her, but it wasn't long before she'd jumped onto her bed, rifled for something lodged between the headboard and the mattress, and spun around to face the bedroom door.

When Batman made himself seen again, pointed back at him was the barrel of an exquisite revolver - a long barrel, Smith and Wesson Model 29 Magnum, which gleamed in the light from the large window behind her bed.

"I don't have to be a good shot to hit you from this distance..." Harley told him, pulling back the hammer of the loaded pistol.

Immediately, the palms of his gloved hands flattened, and he held them up to his chest in a non-threatening display. "Harleen, your father shot and killed two cops with that gun." His voice was gruff, clearly disguised, but from this angle, Harley could see that his blue eyes stood out from the rest of his face.

How he knew that, she wasn't entirely sure, but she wasn't about to ask him either. "And as long as you're not a cop, that record will remain intact," she said, and although her voice was significantly more high-pitched as she spoke there was something almost sinister about her tone. It seemed so unfamiliar that she cleared her throat after speaking. She remained kneeling for a moment in the middle of the bed, up high on her knees, pointing the gun at him as if she'd done it a hundred times before.

She stretched out her right leg, carefully moving off the mattress, and stood some fifteen feet away from him. "Now... the next thing you say is going to be really important, because I don't think anyone on the police force is going to crucify me for gunning down Gotham's most wanted vigilante while protecting myself from _God-knows-who_ traipsing around as a superhero."

There was a moment of silence that stretched in between them, and when she readjusted her aim, Batman's arms fell slowly to his sides.

"Talk..." she growled.

The room was dead silent now. Harley could, however, hear the sound of his deep breathing and her own heartbeat fluttering at her ears. She'd never pointed a gun at anyone in her life, but before he'd gone to jail her father had insisted that she take his gun for safe keeping. Living downtown, you never knew when someone was going to make it thirty-seven stories up, and today was the day.

Finally, he inhaled and asked, "I want to know why you volunteered to treat the Joker."

"_Volunteered?_ What makes you think I volunteered?" The idea of ever having raised her hand for the job made her scoff. "I'm an intern at Arkham... when the Joker started talking I didn't have a choice."

"The article said..."

"The article was written for a very dim-witted readership, and I expected that if anyone would have assumed that, it would have been you." She lowered the gun as she spoke. "Seeing as how the _Gotham Times _has published complete falsehoods about you, and the very police department you used to work with."

More silence. He was quiet until he reached into his cape, and pulled the paper from seemingly out of nowhere. "Well, a picture is worth a thousand words."

It certainly was. There was no denying that situation. Harley wanted to tell everyone that it was simply not what it looked like, but with camera resolutions getting higher and higher as technology developed, it wasn't hard to see the kind of look she was getting from the Joker as he affectionately tweaked her chin. When he threw it down to the floor in between them, Harley brought up the gun once again and maintained her aim. He didn't seem fazed.

"I trust you're familiar with the theory of transference and counter-transference?" he'd asked and she rolled her eyes.

"What is the _fascination_ with this concept? Yes, it happens all the time. It's very typical for a patient to garner some type of affection for their therapist..."

"I wasn't talking about him..." the caped crusader growled, before his eyes shot back to the picture as it lay between them like some massive pink elephant that floated in the room.

The idea of counter-transference was a little stickier. _'The Florence Nightengale Effect', _or regular old transference, is a very natural occurrence when the one who is receiving treatment develops a soft spot for the person treating them. However... the idea that a therapist develops sympathy, agreement, and in some cases deeper emotions for their patient was significantly more controversial. Several cases of counter-transference had been unearthed in recent years, particularly with manipulative patients, such as the Joker. It didn't take her much to admit to herself that she hadn't remained very objective, but her notes were by-the-book.

"What are you implying?" she asked him cautiously, her own stark blue orbs narrowing a twitch, suggesting that his answer should be carefully chosen.

Batman, however, was clearly one for blunt communication "Your ability to care for the mentally ill is admirable, but the Joker will take your affection for him and use it to his advantage. Jeremiah Arkham should have known better than to have put you on the Joker's case, but he couldn't stand being defeated by him. He needed him to talk, and he used you to make it happen."

The words made Harley feel like a pawn in a rather complex game of cat and mouse. She wasn't about to let him win so easily. "What the hell do you know? _You _haven't been present for months of turbulent sessions. _You _don't know the details of the Joker's deranged psyche. _You _don't know how hard I've had to work to develop that level of trust with him. So how could _you _possibly know what's good for me in this respect?" It wasn't hard to see the level of displeasure on her face. Clearly, he'd cut her with his assumption.

He didn't care. "What I know is that you've dug yourself into a very deep hole with a very dangerous man...it doesn't take much to see that," he whispered, his eyes moving up from the paper to her.

What came next, she strained to believe even he had been expecting. Lowering the pistol and letting it hang at her side, she released the hammer...and her pink lips spread into an enormous grin. She laughed, almost diabolically, seemingly at nothing. His darkly circled eyes widened as she watched her.

"Well, well, well..." she said and inhaled through her teeth. "Wow, you'd think you were the one who'd received your doctorate in psychology. But let's take a minute and turn that high-powered perception back at yourself, hmm?" She took a couple steps forward, bending over to pick up the paper before snapping to her full height once again.

Batman had taken half a step back, though not out of fear. In fact, he seemed quite calm to Harley as she leafed through to the article, before refolding it and tucking it under her arm. "Let's figure out why you're really here, shall we?" she asked, before placing the fingertips of her free hand upon her chest. "It's certainly not because of me... you have absolutely no investment in me as a person. You've never saved me from a burning building, never helped me make some harrowing escape from madmen in the Narrows..." She paused and glared at him before plodding on.

"Things have been a little slow recently, haven't they? Yet for some reason, all the hard work you helped to accomplish goes completely unappreciated. Though I'm sure the Mayor and Commissioner Gordon are appreciating their clean streets... why don't _you _come clean? What Gotham is really asking isn't '_oh, what's to be done with this mysterious Dr. Quinzel?' _It's '_Well, if this is the Joker, then what about Batman?'_" She took a couple more steps toward him, and Batman slipped backward down the small hallway and retreated toward the living room.

"Indeed, what is Batman _without _the Joker?" Grinning, she turned the safety on the gun and spun it around her index finger. "You must be really bored if the only thing you have to do is come here to harangue me for answers about your former nemesis." Her plush lips popped in consideration of her point, before she pushed out her pronounced lower lip. "What do you want me to say? That he misses you too?"

"You're a good doctor. Wanting to protect your patient is part of you job, and protecting Gotham is one of mine...but the Joker is not someone you should be protecting this way," he told her, as she slid from the hallway and back toward the open window. It had caused a large draft to rip through her apartment, the frosty air building condensation against the windows.

When they had readjusted themselves to the room, he went on. "The Joker feeds off minds who are willing to listen to him. He is a danger to those who understand his logic or offer him sympathy." He moved again, and although Harley could not see his distinct image, she watched his form float across the room and back over to the window he had stood at before. "The Joker is smart enough to know whether or not you're playing with him, and the fact that you're still alive means that you're not really playing with him at all, are you?"

"How dare you..." she whispered to him. The space in-between them now made her a little less nervous. He floated like an apparition through the space, weaving seamlessly between furniture, but now, back to the window, he appeared as more of a religious statue then a man. His broad shoulders were piqued with the weight of the night, but he held them up and pulled back as if he'd been trained on his posture.

"Doctor..." he started, but she cut him off.

"No! What do you take me for?" Her glassy blue eyes of hers stabbed at him before she turned to walk away. "I'm not a fool. Whether he's lying or not is beyond the point. But I'll tell you this much..." Tossing the newspaper onto a nearby chair, she turned to glance at him over her shoulder. "The Joker hasn't lied about the important things. You're living proof that the way people label us changes every. Yesterday you were a hero. Today you're a villain. What will you be tomorrow?"

Taking an uneasy turn toward the window he had come through, he moved a glance at her over his shoulder. "No one wants to see you become another victim of the Joker." But when he had turned to throw that glance, she appeared all but two feet away, standing at the window, her small fist pounding with frustration against the glass.

"A _victim_? You're worried about me becoming a victim? Well your timing is off, because I've been a victim all my life." It was rare for her to be so enraged, thinking back on all the times where she felt small and self-conscious... she couldn't go back to the way things were. She couldn't go back to the way she felt before she met the Joker. Just thinking about the kind of confidence he gave smoothed out the anger inside her like a hot press to wrinkled parchment.

Almost immediately her fist softened and released. "Not anymore though. Now things are different. Now I'm standing up. There is a sense of..._divinity_, of real exposure, of _beauty_, that comes out of what I know now. All my life people have told me to run and hide, like a victim... and now I've been set free, set on fire. Ambitious, loud, bold. Maybe we're both amicable, and in your life you will achieve good, justice, law... these things you seek. I agree with the things that you do, but I am _not _a victim."

Narrowing his eyes at such a confusion of ideals, he spoke again. "You believe in the things that this city stands for, what Gordon and the other good cops of this city swear to protect, but you devote yourself to caring for men like the Joker?"

A smile began to emerge onto her face. There was a kind of clarity that struck her mind, and Harley felt as though she was slowly coming out of a thick fog. "When the people of Gotham turn and look at themselves in the mirror, they ask: _am I good or am I evil?_ Sometimes I think I'm the only one who understands that you can't have one without the other. All people have the capacity for both... it's foolish to think that we can choose."

Her proximity to him clearly made him uncomfortable, but he didn't move, he only spoke, and now Harley was close enough to watch his eyes flutter to settle on her - those eyes she'd seen somewhere before but couldn't place. There was a familiarity to them that soothed her, and a strangeness that excited her. "A friend of mine told me once... that it's what we do that defines us..."

She peered vacantly out the window of the building, the lights below glittering in her dew-cast eyes. "No... I move one step further... I believe it's what we think, how we feel... because if there is but one corner of evil in our hearts, then your actions cannot be justified as solely good, or solely bad..." She shook her head. "And that... that's an impossibility. That's the idea the Joker has given himself to." Turning, she tossed the gun onto the cushion of a nearby sofa. "Nobody's perfect, and nobody is capable of perfection. Not you, not the Joker... and certainly not me."

"Harley..." he whispered, and moved to reach a hand out for her.

In the split second that followed, there was a rush of electricity that shot up her spine. It was that feeling you get when you see a face in a crowd that you thought was someone else... and you just couldn't put your finger on who. There was a softness in his voice, an impartiality that screamed out to her from so many places. So many people had said her name that way, and they all seemed to cry at once, until the one she was looking for was lost in a sea of faces.

"What did you call me?" she asked. But when she looked up, he was gone.


	20. Chapter 20: Bang!

"Here." Everything about Harley looked frazzled as she slid a stapled contract across the table to the Joker. He sat, uncuffed, watching a flat-screen television mounted in the corner of the room. "Sign this."

His slipper-clad feet rested on the edge of the table, legs crossed at the ankles, supported solely by the two back legs of the chair. The Joker gave the finely-printed contract a cynical gaze, but didn't touch it when it came to a halt just beyond the heel of his fuzzy white slipper.

"What's that?" came his nonchalant reply, eyes flicking up to her.

Her hair was frizzy, as though she'd been running around for hours in an attempt to organize herself. Fatigue seemed to hang on her face like a threadbare nightgown. She came equipped with a large, strongly-scented cup of coffee with a liberal dose of sugar and cream. Joker hated cream in his coffee... it smelled like a dairy farm on a hot day. Everything about her had been off from the moment she stepped in. Clearly, she hadn't slept (or slept well). Her usually crisp attire was wrinkled, her twinkling eyes were vacant and confused, her hair was limp, and her skin seemed that unhealthy color of gray one gets after prolonged periods of poor nutrition and dehydration. He'd noticed Harley had made it a point to look her very best over the last couple months... but today, she bordered on unattractive.

"It's the contract I mentioned to you," she told him. "Signing it will allow me to act as your primary therapist throughout the rest of your observational period here."

The memory of the mention was cloudy at best. Joker had been awakening from heavy sedation when she'd explained the idea to him. While the idea of staying primarily under Jeremiah Arkham's care didn't excite him, he hadn't really given thought to the alternative.

Calmly taking his feet off the table, he held a hand out to her. Instinctively she reached into the breast pocket of her lab coat and retrieved her glasses, handing them over to him and smiling coyly as he fitted them over his ears. The Joker didn't need them to read, but he found the premise of familiarity entertaining nonetheless.

"You look like shit today," he quipped, not removing his eyes from the contract as he pretended to read it. "Long night?"

"Yeah..." she said simply, but didn't elaborate and just took two gigantic gulps of her coffee.

His dark eyes scanned only a couple of lines before they jumped back to her.

She turned to look away, glancing back to the television the Joker had been watching. He'd placed it on some random 24-hour news network: GCN, CNN, MSNBC, it didn't really matter which. Some anchor was talking about the world's events: wars, peace talks, oil spills, protests. Same old shit, different pile.

"Keeping yourself up to date?" she finally asked, but when his face turned up to the television again, he reached for the remote control and switched the channel to a cartoon featuring a lovable giggly sea-sponge and his clinically retarded starfish friend.

"No, just watchin' my stories," he chimed, turning his eyes back down to the contract.

His demeanor lifted somewhat when he heard her giggle at that, a smile of his own carving its way across his face. "So, what kept you up so late last night?" he asked.

And just like that, the weight of the room returned. The small grin that had appeared on her face mere seconds ago had faded and she stared down into the emptying contents of her lukewarm coffee cup.

The Joker waited a couple seconds, but no reply came. He slipped the glasses off one ear, and then the other, placing one of the ear pieces thoughtfully to the corner of his mouth, drinking in her disposition for a moment. She appeared very guarded, though as nonconfrontational as she normally was. Over the months they'd spent together, the Joker had come to realize that eye contact was indeed very important to the girl, and when she denied it, it was usually because he'd asked a question that she wasn't entirely sure how to answer.

Making an incorrect assumption was usually a good way to make her talk.

"Hot date, hmm?" he asked

"No," she shot back

_Bingo. _

"Aw, c'mon... I'm a big boy. I can take a bit of rejection." And although the two of them were more than aware it was a lie, he put on his most believable face and shifted inward, pressing his softening stomach toward the curved metal tabletop so he could lean in intimately to whisper to her.

She scoffed loudly and rolled her eyes. "No you can't, Joker," came her retort, along with a look on her face that said she sorely wished she had the energy to prove it.

He wasn't pleased. Tonguing his molars, he looked away from her and nodded a couple times, which only allowed him to extend his displeasure. Before long, he'd arched forward so steeply that Harley was beginning to lean back in her chair. They switched expressions – whereas hers had been firm just a moment ago, it was softening by the second, while the Joker's face took on several of the characteristics he knew she hated. The telltale wrinkles around the eyes when he squinted, the way he pressed his lips together in feigned frustration – these little things that made her squirm and pulled her in at the same time.

Pressing his index finger into the surface of the table, he thought he saw her swallow a lump in her throat as he told her: "Don't make me ask you twice."

His whisper was no more than a throaty growl, but when he poured on this threatening act with her, he usually got what he wanted. For a long while they stayed in that position, a dynamic tableau of a dysfunctional relationship. She stared wide-eyed at him, and he glared intently back. Her wild eyes blinked in rapid succession as she stared back in shock, all color draining out of her face as she considered compliance. The Joker thought for a moment she might pass out like that, but instead, she swallowed the redeveloped lump in her throat and croaked:

"Batman."

_Oh, no._ The Joker thought for a moment that he couldn't have heard her properly. It just wasn't possible. In fact, he had to gaze around the room for a moment, as if to make sure he wasn't imagining this.

"Last night, in my apartment..." her voice was hardly above a whisper, and on her usually expressive face, her lips were the only bit that registered any movement.

This time his face took on a furious appearance, and he snatched the remote from the table again, muting the television. "What?" he growled, his chin a mere few inches from the silvery surface of the table.

When she leaned away from him, there was a look of something in her eyes that resembled shame, though he wasn't entirely sure why she would feel that way. Shaking his head almost violently, he lightened his expression, trying to put her at ease.

He straightened his back and reached over the table, taking both her hands in his. "...and? What did he say?" There was an odd sing-song quality in his voice that wasn't doing much to mask the rage that was filling him now.

He felt her tiny hands contract into fists under his palm, and she sniffled. She reminded him so much of a child when she was upset. Harley had never been beyond crying, or pouting, and he might have called her a baby if she hadn't been so _good _at it. Whining was not one of her habits, though, which he was thankful for. When she was upset, it was as if she was using every ounce of strength to hold back, to man-up and pull herself together, but simply couldn't.

She inhaled sharply, sniffling again. "He said I shouldn't show you any sympathy, and that Arkham made a terrible mistake instating me to your case." The voice that escaped her crackling throat didn't sound like her own. It was smaller, tinier, like she was putting on a cute display of the damsel in distress.

He wasn't going to lie to himself... this didn't exactly please him. Though he wasn't entirely sure _what _he was angry about. Was it that the Batman could so easily place himself in her presence, while he was forced to book daily appointments? Or maybe that Batman had tried to feed her his own ideas about him? He didn't know, but he felt there was something beyond all of that which was the most upsetting to him.

He'd seen her angry, he'd seen her sad, and she'd given him lip on more than one occasion, and though he'd scolded her once or twice, she always seemed repentant, obediently nodding her head – but he'd nearly seen _fear _in her eyes.

All through her lack of confidence, he had deep down believed her to be fearless... She had never once been afraid of him, and yet a few minutes in the presence of the Dark Knight, she seemed as though she might have a stroke.

He didn't like that one bit.

"Hmmm..." His voice croaked as he released her hands and pressed his spine into the backrest of the chair. "And what did you do?"

Here, she cracked a smile and a tiny laugh, a laugh of disbelief. She covered her face with her hands for a moment before sliding them through her frizzy hair, smoothing it out considerably. "I, uh... I pointed a gun at him," she said bluntly, the grin sliding from her face.

Fuzzy eyebrows arched high on his forehead as he mouthed back to her. "_A gun?_" He was impressed. He didn't think she had it in her, but now that he knew she did, he got an image of one of those stereotypical "Bond Girls" with the tiny semi-automatic strapped to the garters of their inner thighs. Now he was interested. "What kind of gun?"

"_Really? _This is important to you?" she asked with a cynical gaze, to which he tilted his head to the side and shrugged his shoulders. Maybe it wasn't important... but it _was_ entertaining.

Rolling her eyes with a sigh, she offered up a shrug of her own. "I don't know... it's old, it used to be my dad's... it's like..." She peered up to the ceiling in deep thought. "It's not like the kind you load from the bottom." Her index finger stretched out to spin in the air, as if tracing a cylinder. "It's a..."

"A revolver..." he finished, and she snapped her fingers.

"Yes! And it's big!" And when she held out her index fingers about a foot apart, his eyebrows furrowed at her depiction. "And it's shiny silver."

Laughter burst from his mouth so suddenly that it seemed to shake the entire room. He folded his arms up on the table and put his head down, concealing his face as he shook with hilarity. "Oh, ho, ho, hee! You didn't _fire _it, did you?"

Harley didn't seem to find anything very funny about it when she snapped, "I've never even pointed it at anything before!"

This just made him laugh even harder. "Good God, Harley!" He feigned wiping a tear from his eye when he sat back up. "Your father gave you a _Dirty Harry_? You're lucky you didn't pull the trigger. Tiny thing like you? It would've blasted you right into next year." Sniffling, he rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. "Big magnum like that on a little girl like you...did your guest make a swift exit? If I were him, I would have filled those vinyl pants awful quick at that sight."

He looked her over, drumming his fingers upon the table. She'd calmed down over the last few minutes, and though it was considerably off-topic, the image of petite Harley armed with a hand canon like that was...considerably more interesting then a Bond Girl wielding a cheap semiautomatic.

"Feel better?" he asked, finally.

Twisting her lips in consideration, she nodded a couple times. "Yeah...I felt a little better this morning when I realized the only two people that should have an opinion as to what goes on in this room are you and me. At first I might have believed that you would have manipulated me, or used me... but the more I think about the things you say, the more I realize that you're probably the most honest person I have in my life." She paused, and her eyes seemed to scan the ventilation pipes that adorned the ceiling. "...which is sad."

He flourished his hands toward his chest, pressing his fingertips almost delicately along his collarbone. "Why would I lie? What would it get me? I never say anything beyond little white lies." When he tilted his chin down, and kept his eyes pointed up at her, he took on a innocent but haunting appearance. "The truth is so much more _fun_."

When a smile finally cracked through her tough exterior, he felt triumphant, reaching his hands out toward her to frame her face through the window of his fingers. "That's why I _looove_ talking to you. You see, the truth terrifies most people. They hear something they don't want to hear, and they lose their marbles." He reached up and tapped his index finger to his temple. "You actually listen, and unlike everyone else, you _keep _listening...even if it's something you don't want to hear."

"Well, I suppose if I wasn't good at listening, I'd be a pretty shitty therapist, wouldn't I?" she asked with a chuckle.

He bobbed his head back and forth in half-hearted agreement. "Well, maybe..." he waved her off, squinting his eyes as he did. "That's not the point... In fact..." He seemed to think for a moment and pop his lips a couple times in consideration. "The point the Batman made last night is far more intriguing then what I've come to expect from him."

"And what's that?"

_Well... _He needed to give it another moment's thought. That Harley had managed to pull herself into a very close-knit inner circle of the elite of Gotham's underbelly was enough to rile interest in even those who found themselves to be _'weekend-adventurers_'. She, however, was proving herself to be a heavy hitter just a little more each day.

"Well... you know, Batman doesn't just introduce himself to anyone. That's _half_ the appeal. People know he's there... but they don't _really_ know. His allure is his mystique, and the less people know about him, the more they root for him." As he spoke, he swirled his hand throughout the air, referring to some royal populace who stood in awe of their hidden defender.

"Yeah, it's a pretty common symptom of a superiority complex."

"Of course it is! And if a '_superhero_'..." he said with a significant amount of disdain in his voice, "can't have a superiority complex, who can? One of two things happened last night. As much as the guy thinks of himself, he jumped rooftops and flew up fire escapes to hit you up. Either because he's falling off his game and he's too chicken-shit to go and visit the _beloved _Commissioner Gordon, _ooooorr_..." He arched his brows again, tapping his fingertips on the table. "...he's actually seen that you're just as much a part of this as I am. That you're holding just as many cards as anyone else...particularly after I sign this paper..." he said, gesturing back to the contract he still had in front of him.

The look on her face was perfect. It was that silent consideration, that few seconds of hesitation just before the lights comes on in your head. It was epiphany. If there had been any doubt in her mind as to why she had received a visit from the caped crusader, the Joker had just done a very good job of alleviating it. That gaze that washed over her face sold him on the depth of her belief. In fact, her belief in his words was so inherent he felt as though he might have read it straight from some religious text.

And why shouldn't she believe him? The idea that Batman had realized that she was an important tool in attempting to understand or predict him wasn't very hard to get behind.

"You've been brought into the game now, kiddo," he told her, her eyes flashing up to him after staring thoughtfully into space. "Now, you just need to decide whose team you're playing for."

Just then, there was another change in her face. Harley's usual sweet demeanor and appearance made her appear very much as the girl next door. She was the character in the movie who the main character ends up with after he's finished chasing the empty-headed cheerleader. She was pretty, yeah... but in the kind of way that lacked exoticism.

But what looked back at him was not that girl next door. When her eyes half-lidded, they projected an almost amorous gaze over him that made him freeze in his chair. And the lustrous cherry on top was her smile...which broke out across her lips like a rift in the earth, and certainly he felt as though the floor beneath him would quiver and shake. That smile, that exhibited all of her exquisite, white teeth, could charm the pants off a senator, get her into any night club, it was a ticket into every nook and cranny in Gotham, and today's sharper shade of lipstick made them sparkle even more than they had in the past.

Finally, with her sharp-shooting smile, and her finest pair of bedroom eyes, she announced, sleepily, "Oh, I think I've made that pretty clear, haven't I?"

More than a little shocked at that sudden proclamation, he opened his mouth to speak - just as Jeremiah Arkham burst into the room.

Somehow, he seemed smaller then he had before. His normal stiff stature was plagued with terrible posture, and the light reflecting off his glasses shielded his eyes from the Joker's sharp-edged scrutiny. His labcoat was wrinkled, and he looked withdrawn, tired... old. Whatever Harley had threatened him with, it must have been good. Something about that cold sense of confidence he carried around with him had vanished.

Or maybe Harley had stolen it.

When she stood, she slid out of her labcoat and hardly acknowledged him until he held out his hand, as if expecting her to hand the crisp linen garment to him. Curiously, she gazed down at his hand, then back of to his withered face before asking, "Can I help you, Dr. Arkham?" She clearly didn't have any patience for the man, and placed a hand on her shapely hip in obvious annoyance.

"I have a board meeting in fifteen minutes. I need to provide the new primary contract to them for the exchange to be complete," he said flatly, clearly _thrilled_ with the fact that he'd painted himself into a corner and allowed Harley to bully the Joker's conservatorship out of him.

Arms crossing over her chest, she lifted her right shoulder, shaking her head, unimpressed with his demand. "The man hasn't even had twenty minutes to read over it yet. Considering that it arrived on my desk three _days _later than I had requested, I'd say I'm being more than forgiving in this circumstance."

Joker nearly squealed with delight at finally being able to see this - Harley snapping angrily at the dismembered Dr. Arkham, who appeared to have lost nearly every shred of manhood he had left as he lowered his demanding hand away from Harley. But... the Joker was a creature of restraint. Could he have sat there all afternoon and watched the oh-so-venomously-refined Dr. Quinzel rip into the lamentable, shriveling Dr. Arkham? Sure, but it was like putting a giant hot fudge sundae in front of a fat guy. He _could_ eat the whole thing, but for the good of himself and those around him, he probably shouldn't.

"Harl?" he asked.

Her expression fell from displeased to gentle and open as she turned to him. "Hmm?"

"_Harl?_" Arkham remarked, clearly caught off guard by the blasé familiarity that sounded smooth in the Joker's tone.

Pressing his index finger into the contract, the Joker paraphrased. "_Basically,_ this piece of paper here... says that along with my lawyer, you'll be operating as my..." He paused, comically slipped the Harley-glasses back on his face, and pulled the piece of paper away from his face as if to focus on the tiny print. "...medical proxy, conservator, and primary therapist at my request, as a replacement for Dr. Jeremiah Arkham... is that right?"

She appeared wholeheartedly pleased when he summed up the document. He hadn't really read much of it, but he didn't have to. Arkham wasn't exactly selling himself as a responsible doctor, and considering Harley had jumped through every hoop he'd given her so far... well, the choice was obvious.

When she nodded her affirmative, he held out his hand. "Got a pen?"

Arkham had almost obediently reached forward with his silver pen, but without turning to see him, Harley swatted the doctor's hand away and clicked the back of her own pen, spinning it around to offer it to him. Smiling, the Joker took the pen and in surprisingly neat penmanship scrawled a relatively large 'J', followed by an illegible scribbling of the last four letters afterward. When he looked up, the two doctors peered intently at the signed contract. Slowly, and with a slight apprehension, he handed it back to Harley, who leaned over and signed it herself on the line below his name.

"There you are, Dr. Arkham." With a flick of her wrist, she handed the contract back to the looming doctor. "Do let me know if your board has any issues with that."

Arkham began some snippy response, but something suddenly flashed on the television behind them and took the Joker's attention from him. From the jumping underwater squirrel and the butterfly net-wielding sea-sponge came a buzz, and the flash of Gotham's Emergency Broadcast system kicked in. The two doctors had started to hash something out between one another, their voices getting louder and louder, so he waved at them both. "Would you two keep it down? Something's about to happen," he said, and now all three turned, transfixed by the screen.

Snatching the remote off the table, Joker turned up the volume up, and within seconds the buzzing stopped. Replacing those lovable cartoon characters was a small group of men, dressed in full riot SWAT gear. The visors of their helmets were pulled down to shield their eyes from the camera. All of them looked the same: young, white, clean-shaven, no moles, marks or scars, completely unidentifiable.

Harley stood a few feet in front of the Joker, clearly caught off guard by what was unfolding on the screen. Turning to him, she began to ask a question, but he pressed his finger to his mouth to silence her, a serious look on his face as he took in what he saw.

The ten men were in a line, and seated in front of them was another man, but he had been restrained with handcuffs and nylon rope, a black canvas bag over his head. The man on the far right stepped forward with the firm pace of military training, and turned on a dime toward the concealed man, then turned again to face the camera once more as he stood beside him. There was only silence for several seconds, weighted heavily in suspense. This looked so much like something _he_ would do... but was this terrorism, or was this something not to be taken so seriously?

Finally, the man who had moved forward spoke. "Nearly two months ago, the Gotham City Police Department Major Crimes Unit experienced a break-in at their facility, where millions of dollars of artillery evidence was seized from their on-site arms locker. The police kept this information from the press and Gotham's citizens to protect the impotence of newly-promoted Commissioner James Gordon. They suspected this to be an inside job. For once, their suspicions were correct."

Twisting back to pull a drawstring from the felt black shroud, the SWAT-clad man pulled the bag from the head of the concealed man. He was sufficiently gagged, and his mouth was caked with dark, dry blood, a bruised and severely swollen eye above it. He was a large man, big in the shoulders and neck, and for a moment the Joker considered how hard he would have been to knock over. As out of character as it was, the guy was petrified of the smaller, leaner man in uniform standing next to him. He shook and shifted as far away from the man as his restraints would allow.

The Joker's eyes pulled to the side as he heard Harley gasp. "You know who he is?" he asked, but Arkham answered first.

"That's Captain Brutus Carpozo...he took over Major Crimes when James Gordon was promoted," he said softly, as if hypnotized.

"Luckily, we were able to apprehend these weapons before any profit had been turned, but we will not be returning them to the authorities." The way this man spoke was almost robotic, emotionless. He expressed no rage, no thrill; there was no excitement. He was speaking as if he was reading off a script. The Joker might not have had a doctorate in Psychology, but he knew enough to know that if you were going to be afraid of a serial killer, the stoic ones were twice as terrifying as the expressive ones. There was no chance for appeal, no way to stop them. They were programmed machines. They showed no pleasure, no remorse, but they didn't enjoy it either.

_Those_ ones were the _crazy_ ones.

"Due to recent developments, the GCPD has proven itself incapable of protecting the citizens of Gotham, and opt for uncertain and lazy action, if any at all. Gotham placed its hope within vigilantes and men clad in makeup to change its mentality, to no avail. Fear, chaos, mystery... _we _are the remedy to these diseases. We are blunt, focused, and efficient. Gotham is surrounded by men who call themselves heroes, warriors of a noble calling. But these men are fueled by emotions: guilt, righteousness, anger...men like Captain Carpozo spread fear while grinding out a profit on it. The police department cannot be trusted to know their own officers, let alone know how to deal with crime, large or small. Revenge is personal, justice is societal. "

"There's a damn fine cult mantra if I ever heard one," the Joker quipped, but neither Harley or Arkham appeared to hear him. He'd begun to lose interest in the talking head until he pulled a gun from a nearly invisible black holster in his uniform.

"Let the counterinsurgency begin," the man said flatly, and pressed the steely black barrel of the gun to Brutus Carpozo's head, and without a second's hesitation pulled the trigger, sending a spray of blood and tiny fragments of skull to the ground. The color exploded on the floor like a firecracker, frozen in time. As was common with a large head injury, blood gushed from the exit wound, flowing bright and red from his skull and down the front of the dirty white polo shirt he'd been wearing.

As soon as the gun went off, Harley let out a shrill gasp and covered her eyes with her hands, turning around and pushing her face directly into the Joker's shoulder. He instinctively wrapped an arm around her while continuing to watch, wide-eyed.

Arkham seemed to be watching the two of them out of the corner of his eyes, but before either of them could say anything, the men marched single file out of the room and the screen went black. A few seconds later, the show changed to a classic Warner Brothers Bugs Bunny cartoon.

For a split second the Joker considered how many children had seen that. It was the middle of the day, and must have been broadcast to every single channel.

"Oh my god..." Harley whispered, splaying her fingers and peering up at him through the spaces in-between. His eyes were still on the screen, somewhere between shocked and vaguely impressed.

"Did he shoot him?" she asked, as if she really didn't know.

"Yep," came the Joker's blunt reply.

"In the _head_?"

This time he simply nodded. She leaned away from him and took a deep breath, her face white as a sheet. She pressed her palms up against her forehead and glanced over at Arkham in disbelief, but the old man wore an evil, distrusting glare. He shook a heavy finger at the Joker before aiming it at the television screen. "Alright! What did you have to do with this?"

The Joker imagined twisting Arkham's spindly, dusty old finger right off his hand, and while he wasn't immediately violent toward the man, he did confront the accusation. "_Me_?" he growled roughly. "I've been in here for the last five months. But I'm touched you'd compare it to my handiwork."

Taking a step toward him, Arkham proved himself a little more brazen then the Joker would have expected. He willfully put himself in the path of a tornado. "Well, this seems to be just your style, doesn't it? The Videodrome-equse cinematography and deliberate bloodshed is right up your alley, isn't it?"

It wasn't long before Harley had produced a barrier, but the Joker smiled, tilting his chin up as if to dare him on further. "Aw, c'mon Arkham..." Releasing one of his maniacal chuckles shut the old doctor up, his accusatory hand lowering back down to his side.

From where she had slipped in between the two men, Harley held up her hands to get the doctor's attention. "Arkham, if you want to start throwing accusations around, then you can speak to his attorney. Right now, you need to march up to that meeting, and hand in that paperwork." If the expression on her face could have spoken for her, it would have clearly told him to leave the room before he did something he'd regret.

Due to their newly-formed policy, Arkham was legally required to speak to his lawyer or his therapist before he could speak directly to the Joker. As if admitting defeat to that law, Arkham took a couple steps back to the door. With his hand on the door knob, he took a breath, as if to say something, but simply closed his mouth and slipped out of the room.

Harley inhaled as if she hadn't tasted fresh air in several minutes, before turning around and placing the palms of both her hands flatly down on the table. A few seconds of silence passed between them, and the only sound that filled it was the faint bouncing of an aroused French skunk playfully pursuing a disgusted cat in a case of mistaken identity.

Due to his nature, and his 'job' as he referred to it, a little blood and guts never really affected the Joker. In fact, it could be said that blood was the only true form of motivation for the GCPD. People in this city only started moving their asses when you presented them with a corpse. This rogue SWAT team had done exactly that.

And _what_ a corpse.

But she... she was distraught. Her skin was white and clammy, her eyes wide and wandering, and her lips pale and chapped from forgetting to breathe. She, along with many people in Gotham, had probably never seen someone shot before, let alone in the head, point-blank, with a policeman's standard issue handgun.

"Someone new to blame..." he grumbled and slid back into the chair he'd been sitting in just a few seconds before. "What did I tell ya, kiddo? Killers in SWAT? That's like a wolf in wolf's clothing." When she took her palms off the table and gingerly rose to her full height once again, he leaned onto the two back legs of the chair, resting his heels up on the edge of the table once more. "Just more good guys doing bad things..."

But she shook her head. "The more I look around, the more I see..." she said quietly, "everyone is just a bad guy, trying to convince themselves they're doing good things."


	21. Chapter 21: Voice

For Commissioner Gordon, climbing the steps of Gotham City Hall reminded him very much of being a young man, standing in line for condoms at the pharmacy. There was a certain level of embarrassment and shame that accompanied it. You just kept your head down and hoped to God that no one recognized you.

Except today, everyone recognized him.

Cameras flashed and angry press hurled scathing questions at him. Usually, when people are asking about your level of invested integrity and ulterior motives, it's because you've done thing wrong; you've done something to upset the balance of your own soul. Jim had never questioned his ethics for a moment. Had there been a whisper of doubt in his mind? Of course, but it had less to do with a lack of confidence and more to do with his refusal to impose his own beliefs of right and wrong on the entire city.

But his secrecy had enraged the wrong people, and as soon as he'd seen Brutus Carpozo's head blown off just after the one o'clock news, he'd received a phone call from the Mayor – and that's why he was down at city hall.

Kindly enough, the Mayor's office had arranged for security to rope the press away from Jim as he jogged up the city steps and into the large, neo-Gothic, mirrored edifice that was Gotham City Hall. He ignored the questions, the remarks, the waves of disrespect they launched at him. In such a desperate situation, he'd made the only choice he could - not in an effort to cover his ass, or the asses down at MCU, but because he genuinely thought it was right.

Was that wrong?

It had been mere hours since the telecast of Carpozo's murder, and as he entered City Hall, he found investigators, administrators, secretaries and staff running about, each of them charged to answer one certain question : had Carpozo been held by a full-fledged terrorist organization? How had they hacked into the Gotham Emergency Broadcast System? How many police officers had been involved with the investigation? They were like rats in a maze, and with office clerks, and deputies gawking at him as he passed... he was beginning to feel like a piece of cheese.

A small bit of relief came when Jim entered the lobby of Mayor Anthony Garcia's office. He wasn't made to wait like he usually was. Instead, he was waved into the office by Garcia himself, who stood behind his large oak desk surrounded by lawyers and public relations representatives. They were fanning through file folders, all of them seeming to talk at once. Their stern faces and glowering glances at Jim made him shift uneasily, both hands clutching the handle of his briefcase in front of his knees, like an enthusiastically nervous undergrad at an interview. However, it wasn't long until the Mayor waved them out the office.

When the last lawyer had collected his file and closed the door behind him, the sound almost made Jim jump, but it was the eerie silence that came from the usually loudmouthed Mayor that really put him on edge.

"Gordon..." he said, and spread a large, if apprehensive smile across his mouth. His thick lashes and happy eyes gave him the impression of warmth, so much so that it was hard to tell if he was upset.

Jim knew he was.

"Anthony, I..." Jim started, but he was promptly cut off by the patronizing tone in the voice of the clean-cut young diplomat.

"Listen, do me a favor first and tell me what on God's green Earth you were thinking when you decided to keep this matter in the MCU and internal affairs? This is a public relations disaster for City Hall."

Between feeling like he was buying condoms, heading into first interviews, and now being patronized, Jim was feeling more like a child by the minute. Suddenly he remembered how much he'd hated his childhood. In as calm a disposition as he could muster, he attempted to put the Mayor at ease. "I know, I know... at first I thought that maybe my office could take care of it, and the investigation had been rigorous but until a few hours ago...it came down to whether or not we were going to worry Gotham about millions of dollars worth of missing weapons, or whether or not we were going to keep it as official police business."

Though his reasoning seemed to make sense to the stern-faced Mayor, Garcia still wore concern on his face as he slid back into his overstuffed, studded leather chair. Leaning his elbows on the table, and inhaling for a large sigh, he glanced back to his Commissioner. "I believe you, Gordon. I knew what kind of a man you were when I put you in this hot seat. But the rest of Gotham..." He reached his right hand out toward the large window that looked of Gotham's center square. "They're not going to understand. They've seen too many good people go too bad over the last couple years to think that anybody in a position of authority can actually make a good decision for the public body."

"I know, sir."

"No, Gordon. No, I don't think you do. There are a lot of people out there who are scared, who lock their doors with three deadbolts every night, who have to put bars over the windows of their children's bedroom." And here he pointed at Jim with a grudging and accusatory finger. "And you just gave them another reason to be afraid, because the only thing worse then the criminals out there are the people who won't tell them the truth."

He was right. Jim couldn't stand being lied to. He couldn't even stand it when people withheld the truth. He taught his own children that lying was wrong, and that being honest was what made you a stronger person... a better person. What could he say to them now?

Taking a deep, albeit hesitant breath, Jim gave him a single, solemn nod. "What do you want me to do?" he asked, inwardly trembling at what he might say.

The Mayor genuinely seemed to mull it over for a moment. He pressed his fingertips together, his hands forming a perfect triangle as his pulled them up underneath this nose. His pose gave him a very thoughtful appearance, but his large brown eyes looked lost as they seemed to dart around the room, looking for answers printed upon the walls.

"You're gonna hold a press conference," Garcia said at last. "You're going to formally apologize to the citizens of this city. My PR team tells me that people swallow that stuff up. You're also going to make a promise to investigate this murderous task farce, and bring them to the justice that they so desperately crave." Jim had to hand it to him... he was a particularly passionate young man when you gave him the time. He went on. "Every time you turn over one of their stones, you're going to let the public know... they're going to be with you, looking over your shoulders, until you nab the bastards."

What else could he say? Jim couldn't refute that, nor did he want to. The people needed someone to believe in, and far be it from him to take that away from them. With another nod, he stood, still holding his briefcase, though his grip was a little looser. "I'll have something prepared for a press conference tomorrow morning, and I'll run it by your office before deadline tonight."

"Perfect," he said nonchalantly as Jim turned to leave. "Oh, and Jim?"

Swirling around, Jim offered only his usual apologetic glance. "Yes, sir?"

"Don't make me regret my decision."

# # # # # # # #

What else could he do but think? Think and watch the clock as the seconds ticked past. If he'd been a free man right now, he would have been sitting at a table, playing card with a few of the more social, jovial crew members. Or maybe he would have been sitting on the couch in his place, watching the news and plotting his next big move. But no, instead he was sitting up at night, watching the second hand move seamlessly from one second to the next, waiting for the hours to roll by.

Sometimes Harley would offer him an Ambien or a Lunesta to help him sleep, and his reply was always the same: "I'm not taking a medication marketed by a butterfly." But she took pity on him. He could see it in her face: the sympathetic way she smiled, but eyebrows pressed together in concern. It made him want to roll his eyes and take the damn pills... but he didn't.

He'd refused most medication since he'd come to Arkham, and oftentimes they'd offer him some of the really fun stuff: Valium, Adderall, Prozac, Ativan, Lithium, Prolixin, even Xanax if he got really testy. It was high-end stuff they were pushing on him, but Harley would only ever ask him once, and if he said no, she knew he meant it. She often brought up the dark circles that surrounded his eyes. But he'd had sleeping issues for as long as he could remember, and he knew it was taking its toll on him, especially as he got older. He'd used medication in the past to sleep, but it usually left him in a thick, dreamless, unnatural sleep that usually left him more tired than before... so he refused it.

"You ever think maybe your insomnia has something to do with an... uneasiness? A lack of inner peace?" Harley had asked him once upon a time. Even now as he laid in bed, eyes wide open, staring at the dark ceiling, it seemed like she'd asked him that question forever ago. So long ago that he'd forgotten exactly how he answered it, but he imagined that he would have found the thought of having a peaceful mind...a pretty moronic question to ask _him_.

A lot of Harley's questions didn't make any sense, come to think of it. She was a smart girl, and she knew who she was talking to, but she would sometimes query him about parts of his character that didn't exist. Sometimes she'd tell him about wars going on in other countries, or about environmental issues, or about the weather... topics his mind never dwelt on. But whatever his answer, even if it was a disinterested grunt, it seemed to engage her. She listened to every piece of bullshit that came from his mouth and clung onto every word like a child swinging on the bars of a jungle gym.

That thought was so tangible, so vivid, that it was enough to make him sit up in bed, engulfed in the darkness of his room. She _listened _to him... and not in any sort of fleeting way, and not in an effort to be polite. She listened to him because she wanted to.

Small shards of light cascaded from the six-inch, square, barred window in the door, and lit the room just enough so that when his eyes adjusted he could make out the perimeter of the cell, and could wander about without running into the chair or table. When his mind became antsy like this, he had to move, had to walk, had to pace. He'd done it so often at night that he was beginning to wear a track into the painted floor. Often his thoughts were consumed by ideas for escape, and having been in the facility for five months now, the Joker had discovered, oh, about twenty-nine different ways to leave completely unnoticed. A feat that had been particularly easy when he'd managed to pay off an orderly through his men on the outside to provide him with a schematic to the facility.

Tonight, however, his mind didn't race with thoughts of escape or attack. It raced with thoughts of his pet project, which had, undoubtedly, become more of a success then he had intended.

The Joker was constantly talking, constantly telling people his ideas. Everyone seemed so encapsulated by his thought process, half the time out of sheer curiosity. In Dent's case, he'd shared his ideas to give the Batman a run for his money. But Harley had come to him as a student comes to a professor. She was willing to learn for the sake of the psychiatric art, but this ambition, in time, had morphed into something else entirely, something surprising.

Something...fun.

After pacing back and forth diagonally across his cell, he seemed to collapse onto the floor, seating himself cross-legged in the path of the beam of light that struck the warn, painted cement. Resting the palm of his left hand rigidly on his knee, and propping his chin up with his right, he stared thoughtfully into the darkness. His skin was cast in its familiar ghostly white from the neon outside his door, but he paid his appearance no attention. Instead, his mind's eye studied the face of his prize pupil.

Maybe he wouldn't have told her so much if she didn't look at him the way she did. There was a sincerity in her face that couldn't be faked, and a sense of agreement in her tone that couldn't be anything else but genuine. To go so far as to say he trusted her was a bit of a stretch, but if she had been acting in an attempt to get information from him, she deserved an Oscar.

The Joker was particularly proud of the fact that it took a lot to dupe him. He always smiled as he watched people unravel their little _plans_...they'd think themselves so smart, only to be fooled by his unassuming intelligence. That was the funny part. He always found himself a couple steps ahead of the others, and sometimes he wondered if maybe he wasn't so much a clown as he was a magician, the way he left their mouths agape.

But... this girl...

He heaved a heavy sigh, turning his dark eyes up to the ceiling as he stretched back to lay on the cold concrete floor. The chill through the canvas jumpsuit relaxed him, like a cold shower on an astonishingly hot day.

Maybe the most ironic part was that he seemed to enjoy things about her that he didn't expect to see in anybody. She was irrevocably, and consistently kind. She went out of her way to do things for him: stayed up late, came in on weekends, bullied those who tried to bully him, worried about him. She was convinced there was a man tucked away within his ideals, and though he'd tried to correct her, it seemed to be the only opinion of hers he could not dissuade her from. Every sentence he spoke was like her own personal victory, and he could see that in her blue eyes. Fireworks of joy and self-validation seemed to go off in them every time he said something to her.

But beyond the sweetness and the camaraderie, there was the pure and simple fact that she was perhaps one of the most beautiful women who'd ever considered him for longer than a couple moments. At first she'd appeared rather spinsterish, though it was clear to him by now that this was merely an attempt at professionalism more than an actual sense of style. Recently there had been quite the turnaround... and though he wasn't a material man, he appreciated the appeal of a well-tailored suit.

She gave him something to look at in those pencil skirts and towering heels that still left her a few inches shorter than him...though it was rare for them to be standing together, always with that invasive table between them. But the way she moved, turning on the toes of every expensive pair of shoes, and the way she looked at him with her vibrant eyes, darkly rimmed in thick black lashes, and how merely the suggestion of her smile motivated him to make her laugh...

_Twenty-nine ways to get out of here... and you wonder why you stay..._

The voice was so vivid he shot up and looked around the room feverishly, unconvinced it could have come from within his own head. His pupils dilated as the nooks and crannies of the cell began to appear through the darkness.

Standing, he dusted himself off, only to lean over again to collapse into the springy, overused mattress. Folding his hands behind his head, his eyes shot spikes into the ceiling above him, as if trying to focus on the most mundane of subject matter to free himself from the thought of her.

But more than her style, or her smile, or her kindness, he found himself amazed at the change in her. She'd moved from this insecure, unaware, mousy little girl, into the bold, manic, confident vision that he had fed her. It wasn't hard to tell what she had wanted to become, and as soon as he had mentioned to her that she could become it, the changes seemed to happen overnight.

And though he was never one to openly admit to any sort of faith he had in people, as he finally drifted off to sleep, the Joker found himself idly wondering what else Harley might be capable of.


	22. Chapter 22: Games

**Note From The Author:** _Hey Guys! Just wanted to send you a little note to let you know there is some poker playing in this chapter. If you're not familiar with Poker, just keep in mind that two pair beats a single pair, three of a kind beats two pair, straight beat a three of a kind, flush beats a straight, full house beats a flush, four of a kind beats a full house, and a straight flush beats a four of a kind. Whew! That actually sounds way more confusing then it is. _

_Feels like this week took forever to go by, but I'm sure you'll enjoy this chapter. However, I've been experiencing MAJOR symptoms of burn-out... I just haven't been excited about writing recently, and things at work at getting crazy. I could use a vacation, but a few kind words from some readers would do ^_~!_

_You guys really keep me going, so thanks in advance for your reviews! They really keep me motivated and on my game. _

_I really hope you like this chapter. I'm working hard to make sure the next one is just as enjoyable!_

_Thanks! _

_~Cheers! xoxo_

"Okay, now..." said Harley, as she sat in her chair with her legs resting upon the fixed desk in the Joker's cell. "I have most of the basics here - really, I'm just filling in the blank spots. I don't think they expect any sort of _magnum opus_, they just need proof within a reasonable doubt that you have a multitude of different psychological behaviors that require further study. That's kind of the whole point of an observational period."

She'd been with the Joker for the better part of three days. As the six month period was quickly coming to an end, Harley's main objective was to make sure that she was providing the court with all the information they would need. Not to mention she'd have to have every detail memorized, just in case the ambitious young assistant district attorney tried to pull a fast one on her...but despite that, she was feeling rather confident.

Flipping cards over one another in an unamused game of solitaire, the Joker wasn't nearly as excited about the prospect of organizing information as she was. Every time she'd read him a report about about his personality traits, or symptoms of different mental illnesses, he would disconnect from the conversation, change the topic, or somehow otherwise exhibit a general lack of interest. Seeing himself detailed on paper was something that he felt oversimplified who he was, and Harley was inclined to agree. The Joker didn't fit very well into the well-manicured columns of psychiatric reports and analysis, but for the court's sake, she had to narrow it down as far as she could.

While Harley scribbled in her notebook, and the Joker idly flipped cards in-between bouts of conversation with her, the two of them lazed almost happily in the warmth of the room. Winter was in full force now, and skirts had turned into well-tailored tuxedo pants for the most part, but the shoes remained are precarious as ever.

"So?" he asked, to finally break the casual and familiar silence.

"So?"

"So, you gonna miss me when they ship me off to Blackgate?" he asked, tilting his nose down to the pad of paper she'd been writing on. Up until just a few days ago, the Joker hadn't seen her working away so feverishly on her final report. In all honesty it was simply a conglomeration of her notes over the last six months, organized into a nearly ninety-page report that was due on Judge William Master's desk in only a few short days.

Harley had worked hard on it, and scoffed at his lack of faith in her ability to get him off the hook. "What? Are you kidding? If you get locked up in prison after reading this report, I will be significantly confused."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I mean look, we've got..." She trailed off only long enough to count down a list of undiagnosed mental illnesses that the Joker had periodically exhibited during the last six months. "_Twelve _different psychoses just lurking below the surface, which would be expertly treated by 'yours truly' should you remain in Arkham."

When she turned to gaze over at him from her compiled list, he again seemed genuinely uninterested. He flipped one card over the next, pairing up face cards as they came up in succession. He appeared almost despondent as he sunk into his little game, and it was an emotion that concerned Harley enough to shut the hardcover leather bound notebook and stand, sliding over the surface of his bed. The loosened springs creaked with her weight as she shifted her back up against the wall and extended her legs across the width of the mattress. He sat much like he did when they met in his cell, legs crossed, leaning comfortably against the wall by the head of his bed.

But it wasn't his posture that worried her, or his idle fiddling with playing cards. The Joker was constantly doing several things at once. He could talk, read, play with his cards, even simultaneously hold two conversations at a time...but the one thing he _couldn't_ do was shut the hell up. The one constant in Harley's life since she'd met the Joker was his need to communicate. He was always talking. Sometimes there would be shared silences between them, but they never lasted for more than a few seconds before he moved on to another topic. There always some point he was trying to make, and he always had some roundabout way of getting to it. But the things he would say, no matter how disturbing, were never as troubling as his silence.

She crossed her legs at the ankles, inspecting her shoes for a brief moment before she turned to watch him again. "Please don't tell me that you're worried. Honestly, there's nothing to worry about."

He pulled his gaze away from the cards just long enough to give her a cynical glance. She wondered what else he could be worrying about if her assumption had been wrong, but just as she was about to push him a little harder on the subject, he asked her a question of his own. "Did your family have any pets growing up?"

The question had come so far out of left field that it took Harley a moment to process it. She shook her head, mouth agape, as if an answer was difficult to formulate. "Uh, yeah..." she told him, shrugging. "My mother had a cat when I was little."

"Did you like it?"

An amused scoff escaped her throat, and throughout her reply she continued shaking her head, making it pretty clear that his queries befuddled her. "Not... really, no. I'm more of a dog person." Inhaling deeply, she took the opportunity to ask before he managed to weasel in another question. "Why?"

Shrugging, he flipped a pair of queens over, bunched them together, and set them aside. "Hmm? No reason really... just curious."

_Bullshit,_ Harley said to herself, but she didn't have much of a chance to press him before he moved on.

"What's your mother like?" Quickly, he gathered up all the cards and split them into two smaller decks, folding them into a riffle shuffle. "I mean, if she's still alive, that is."

As he began dealing them into an undefined game, Harley watched as a hand of five cards fell neatly into place neatly at her side. "My mother? Yeah, she's alive... she's this small, Jewish-American woman with a thick east-end accent and a bad attitude."

"So in other words, nothing like you?"

She had to smile at that. "Well, Joker, you just made my day. Doesn't matter what age they're at, women love hearing they're nothing like their mothers." There was a certain amount of truth to that, but then again, other than the accent and the ancestry, the Joker didn't really know anything about her mother. But his assumption was correct. Harley reminded herself of her father, and it wasn't long before he moved on to him as well.

"What about dear old dad?" the Joker asked, picking up the five cards he'd just dealt and motioning for her to do the same.

She gingerly picked up her hand, which consisted of five cards of the same suit. She smiled. "My Dad? Hmm... well, you're going to have to win this hand before I tell you."

His light colored brows arched on his forehead. "Oho! Is that right? Well, I hate to inform you, but when I comes to poker with women, I only play the _strip _variety."

Now Harley lifted one of her own brows and scoffed at him. "You sure about that? Because I'm wearing..." She had to pause for a moment to mentally count. "Ten different articles of clothing, and you're wearing a canvas jumpsuit and two socks. Who do you think is going to win?"

He narrowed his eyes for a moment. "Mmm... good point."

"I win a hand, I ask you the question. You win a hand, you ask me the question? Sound good?" And when the Joker nodded his head apprehensively she glanced over her cards again. Five cards of the same suit is referred to as a flush, and is generally a very good hand, usually beating out everything save for a full house, four of a kind, or a straight flush. She pulled two cards at random and placed them down. "Two please."

He dealt her a couple of cards and one for himself before they flipped their hands over to reveal them. She had nothing: three hearts and two aces. He had two pairs of Jacks and Kings. A wicked smile passed over his lips.

She inhaled a deep breath to answer his question. "My father was a good guy - gentle... sensitive."

"He's dead?" the Joker asked with a tone of casual solemnity.

"Might as well be. He's in Blackgate, serving two life sentences." She listened to the cascading rippling of the playing cards and watched as a few came to land beside her knee as he dealt out their second hand.

"Murder?"

"Yeah... he shot and killed two cops during a robbery." Picking up her cards and peering over them, she spotted a pair of sixes and sevens – previously undivided in the pack from his game of solitaire. "He was put away when I was fifteen. I've only seen him a couple times since."

"Your mother divorce him?"

What a strange question for him to ask. So many women did – either out of disgust, or time spent apart from their loved one, but Harley's mother had never mentioned it - a thought that caused her to chuckle and shake her head yet again. "No, actually..." Her lips spread into a large smile. "She speaks ill of him all the time... still, you know? Like... fifteen years later. But she never mentioned divorcing him. I guess she really loves the guy." Here she shrugged, and there was almost a proud beam illuminating from her grin. "That was like _three _questions, by the way." She tossed away the odd card out and asked him for another.

"You just said 'the question', you failed to state how many I was allowed... and nobody like the kid who changes the rules half way through because he can't win," he chided her, but when they revealed their hands, Harley's full house of sixes and sevens beat out the Joker's small straight. His face dropped when he saw it.

"Why are you asking me all these questions?" she asked, and he snatched her cards from her.

"I told you before, I'm just curious." He chuckled in amusement. "That was a stupid way to waste a question."

"It wouldn't be if you were telling the truth," she snapped back at him and watched as he reshuffled, a coy grin still playing on his face.

Refusing to make eye contact as he dealt out their next hand, he feigned offense. "I _am _telling the truth. Besides, these could be my last few days here, I'm just trying to get the details." He glanced up at her as he placed the rest of the deck aside and picked up his hand. "Can you blame a guy?"

"Could you stop doing that?" she asked him, and refused eye contact as well as she looked over her cards, a measly pair of threes and an ace. "You're making it sound like you've got little to no faith in me. Believe it of not, I _haven't _been doing this old song and dance just to entertain you for the past five months. Whether you know it or not, I've actually been doing my job. You'll be fine."

She tossed him back two of her cards. He bunched his entire hand together and held it close to his chest before dealing back to her. "And once Arkham has his meal ticket, you honestly believe that he's going to see the point of keeping me in therapy?"

Harley's heart dropped. There _was _a chance that Arkham might figure that he'd won the war...he could very well lock the Joker up and throw away the key. She gave him a sympathetic glance, which quickly hardened into determination. "Yeah, well... I won't let that happen," she said resolutely, picking up her cards and arranging them in her hand. "Thanks to you, I have a pretty big mouth now. It would be a shame for me not to use it."

There was a few seconds of silence as the Joker seemed engrossed with the cards he was holding, before he grinned and said, "Yeah... shame for your mouth to go unused."

He revealed his hand, which was a straight flush of spades, and Harley heaved a sigh at the unchanged pair of threes. She simply folded her cards and handed them back to him, defeated. She crossed her legs, her black silk pants sliding easily over the surface of his bed. Propping her elbow onto her knee and leaning her chin into her palm, she proclaimed: "You win."

"You seeing anybody?"

Eyes flaring to the size of tea saucers, she abruptly sat up from her slumped position. "I beg your _pardon_?" she exclaimed in a posh, bourgeoisie tone.

"Are. You. Seeing. Anyone? _Habla ingles_?" he asked her jokingly, shuffling the cards once more before placing them back in the small cardboard box he had originally pulled them from.

She sat, still cross-legged, but now crossed her arms over one another, the crisp white dress shirt she'd been wearing crinkling softly. "Ahhh.. I'm not answering that!" she told him with a rather large smile, which expressed more exasperation and shock than actual happiness.

"Why not? That was some hand I just had." Indeed it had been. His straight flush had been a complete fluke – dealt out in one hand, all in the luck of the draw. He scratched his temple idly. "Alright, well... if you're not going to answer the question, then you need to remove an article of clothing."

"What?" she asked him, high pitched and frantic. "That wasn't part of the game, you're changing the rules!"

"I told ya, Toots, I only play poker of the strip variety with women. You don't want to pick 'truth', so you're gonna pick 'dare'. By default, you know there's only two choices."

He was right. Essentially all this was was an extended game of truth or dare, and she'd found herself, as players of the game often do, between a rock and a hard place. "Fine, you wanna play that way... here." Stretching out her legs, she slipped out of one of her shoes, handing it to him defiantly. He'd mentioned it being his favorite pair, the black heels with the bright red coloring underneath.

The Joker seemed displeased as he inspected the shoe. "No, no, no...you've never played strip poker before, clearly. It only counts if the article of clothing is significantly revealing. Sooo...you either answer the question, or I get to see some skin." He seemed too entirely pleased with himself, and he had to know that there was no way in hell that she would remove any article of clothing besides _maybe _her lab coat.

Denying him any such satisfaction, she snatched back her shoe, placed it on her foot, and cleared her throat, hesitating for a moment before she croaked, "No... I'm not seeing anybody."

"Why not?"

"Okay!" she called out to him almost angrily. "That was your question, we're not playing this game anymore!"

"Psh! You're no fun! I mean, what's it hurting? Besides, you know... your pride, self-esteem, body-image, feelings about your biological clock?" he asked in his most sickly sweet-tone that was nowhere near sincere. Flashing a large grin, he motioned her onward. "C'mon...you can tell Daddy..."

Harley wasn't entirely sure whether it was her level of patience or the fact that she found herself completely incapable of staying angry at him for more than a few minutes, but something in her pushed her to confess. She produced a very deep sigh after a very deep inhale, pushing her hair away from her face. "Well, I used to date more often... it's been harder since I've been working here. Damn near impossible since I've started treating you."

There was a sense of pride that radiated from him there, so much so that his chest puffed out as he moved to sit alongside her, back pressed up against the same wall as hers now. "Is that so?" he asked, as if the thought surprised him. The Cheshire grin on his face said differently.

As he sat by her side, Harley was happy she didn't have to attempt to maintain eye contact. She looked instead to the other side of the room, which was a blank wall. It allowed her focus solely on the most basic answer she could give him, considering the emotional subject matter. "Yeah, you'd be surprised how interested people get when you tell them what you do for a living."

That seemed to intrigue him. He turned to look at her, and out of the corner of her eye she could he that his eyebrows were heavily furrowed. The heavy ridge of his brows gave him a sinister visage. "What do you mean?"

She still refused eye contact with him, and continued staring into the big beige wall across the room. "Well, I mean, it's not like I can talk about what I do... I have to adhere to confidentiality. But that inevitable first date question, you know? 'So, what do you do?'" She scoffed, scratching her scalp, her hair jostling around. "So I tell them, and the response is always the same... this sick sense of interest they have. Like it's cool to have a mental illness."

"I don't know, I think it definitely gives me an edge."

She turned to glance at him, unamused by his comment. "Well, it's _not _cool. A lot of people battle with mental illness their whole lives and never get any better... the fact that it seems to intrigue people, the idea that there's something sexy or adventurous about mental illness makes me nauseous." The idea suggested perhaps its own form of mental illness... but people were always interested in the unusual. The Joker didn't help the scenario, there was something very appealing about the villainous type... but Harley hadn't dated anyone since she'd met the Joker.

"Anyway... it's not like it matters much. I'm not in any rush. I'm a homebody, and I spend a lot of time at work. I'm not a party animal, I don't typically enjoy dating... it's just this dance, everyone stalks around, typing to impress people, making themselves look attractive..." She shook her head back and forth quickly to stop herself from rambling. "Why do you care anyway? If I was seeing anybody, I don't think I'd even tell you."

This seemed to offend him, and he furrowed his brows again. "Why not?"

She chuckled and tilted her head back to glance at the ceiling before turning to him once more. "If I was seeing someone, you're telling me you wouldn't have your goons hunt him down?" she asked coolly, already knowing the answer.

"Well..." Quickly turning his head to glance away from her, he shrugged. "Can't _promise _that..."

Her laughter broke up the room's quiet, and turned the conversation back to the light hearted tone that the Joker had probably intended it to be. "Well, I'm not seeing anyone... so, you can cross that off your 'to-do' list." Harley wasn't sure whether to be frightened or flattered by the prospect of the Joker's goons watching her if she ever went out on a date again. It was clearly an act of protective possession, but there was something almost comforting about that when it came from him...

"Wouldn't want you to be lonely..." he said flatly, his eyes still turned away from her.

She couldn't help but be impressed. Six short months ago, this man didn't care who spoke to him. Words had shot like venom from his mouth. His only intent at Arkham had been to pour salt in the wounds of all those unsuccessful therapists, to make fun of those who were genuinely trying to help him. Now, he didn't want her to be _lonely_? Were his little questions just filling in the little holes in his brain where he stored his memories of her...

He slumped forward, reaching out for the deck of cards again, sliding them from their packaging.

"Hey!" she cut in, reaching over to rub his back. Her action must have come as quite the surprise, since it caused him to turn and glare at her. "I don't care... I don't crave stupid, vapid, meaningless relationships with empty, bad sex. If I was, I could find that in a heartbeat. What's important to me is my work. Coming in here and talking to you, helping you, hopefully making you feel better." Her slender legs moved up under her torso as she moved to face him, kneeling on the mattress beside him. "And you're not going _anywhere_. That little poindexter attorney is going to have to line up some pretty good questions to knock me off my game." She pressed her index finger into her chest on each word for emphasis.

Her confidence must have done something to persuade him, because he wore a mischievous grin when his eye turned back to the cards. "You're not going anywhere. You're going to stay here with me... so in short answer to your question..." She paused for a moment, the hand that had rested assuredly on his back lifting into his hair to push it out of his face. "Yeah... I'd miss you if they shipped you off to Blackgate... but I'm trying to avoid that."

Her short, well-manicured fingernails gently grazed over his scalp a couple times and his back straightened and arched, much like a cat's would under that kind of touch. When he released a subtle groan, it bled into his final question, his twisted lips still smiling. "One last thing..."

"Oh, still trying to play out the last of your hand?" she asked, standing from the bed and dusting herself off. "Well, alright... it was a good hand. One more."

Mischievously, his smile stretched and contorted in that certain way he had where it consumed the bottom half of his face. He sat up on his knees, nearly able to look her in the eyes at such a height. She hadn't had much of an opportunity to move away from him yet, and didn't really seem to mind the fact that he'd closed the distance now. They'd been in closer proximity before.

"What about _me_, hmm? We're already pretty well-acquainted, and I'm not at all interested in psychiatric medicine and diagnosis." It was true. All the tests, all the information, all the diagnostics, all the drugs - these things had little to no importance to the Joker, and so it was safe to say he'd never ask any questions about them.

Nonetheless, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to tease him. "Aww!" Her eyes sparkled as she clasped her hands together, pulling them up to nestle against her cheek like a teen who'd just received her prom corsage. "A romantic candlelight dinner by the cinder-block walls in Arkham's cafeteria?" She dropped the act as quickly as she'd put it on, enthusiasm draining from her face, and she turned to the desk to lift her paperwork and notebook from its surface.

"If..."

"If... what? You weren't in here?" she asked, and then scratched her brow idly, as if considering something which bore more weight than her voice expressed. "Or if you hadn't tried to kill... what, eight hundred people?"

He shrugged, briefly looking off to the side before turning his attention back to her. "Well, depends...some women find the whole 'bad-boy' image kind of a turn-on."

She chortled once and turned her body back to him, though now she was a couple more feet away. "Regardless of the image... I don't know... there's a lot of _ifs_ involved..." She paused and raked her teeth over her bottom lip, allowing it to pop into a soft, contemplative pout. "But... you do get points for originality, and intelligence. I might... if you asked. And if you weren't in here and hadn't tried to kill eight hundred people.  
Pride beamed visibly from his hopeful face. Egotists did this all the time, and the Joker was constantly asking her little questions in order to get a good ego stroke in... but when he slid off his knees and laid down on the mattress with his hands behind his head, sporting a satisfied smile, there seemed something different about that usual narcissism.

"But, you know..." She turned toward the door. "I've said it before, but even if you had me, I don't think you'd have the slightest idea as to what to do with me."

The pride on his face disappeared, replaced by curiosity. "You've told me that before. What makes you think that?"

She swiped her card key over the lock on the door. There was a buzz and she swung it open on its hinge, looking back to him over her shoulder. There was some pride of her own bursting through her chest. Usually, when faced with such a question, the best answers come to you a day or so later...so rare were the instances when she'd get the chance to shut him up, and she wallowed in the glory of it. "Didn't you know? You can't just jump on Harley and expect you're gonna know how to ride it."

There was the slightest pause where his mouth hung open, and a tinge flooded up into his face. A croaking sound escaped his throat as he tried to say something, but couldn't muster the words.

She just winked at him playfully and giggled. "Everyone knows you have to be given a license first."

In good sportsmanship, she waited for a couple moments for any sort of comeback of response, but when silence fell between them, she just smiled, and waved daintily with the fingers on her free hand. "Night night."

His mouth closed, and swallowing the lump in his throat, the Joker was finally able to croak, "G'night..." as the door slammed and locked itself behind her.


	23. Chapter 23: Ice

A large, tarp-covered flatbed truck bounced to and fro along the long drive leading toward Wayne Manor. Gears ground and shifted as it made its way up a hill which housed a grove of imported Macedonian pine and Jimson weed undergrowth that dotted the early morning landscape from beneath freshly fallen snow. Clumps of it cradled in the clefts of pine needles as the engine roared past, toppling neatly into naturally arranged piles between the rows of the artificially planted forest.

As the truck crowned the hill, bit by bit the enormous structure before it came into view. It borrowed heavily from its predecessor, and though it was the same in design, it had grown more numerous in functions. The view of it had always been the same. Towering peaks of yellow limestone jutted out from the parts of the earth that remained mossy and green, shielded from the elements by the sheer girth of the building. Parts of it were decorated in highly-prized specimens of alabaster, jasperoid and obsidian. It had looked the way it always had: classic, stoic, peaceful, and intimidating – as if you were embarking upon the protected property of some forgotten piece of monarchy.

Dawn was just breaking, and there appeared to be no activity surrounding the manor as the truck rolled up and around the fountain by the main entrance. During the day, it looked as though it was the country maison of a well-established baron, but in the wee hours of the morning, the strategically arranged lighting gave the place a ghostly appearance, as if it was a mere apparition of the edifice that had come before it.

Around to the service entrance and further still, toward a steeped embankment, the truck moved toward an entrance, heavily guarded by trees and a precarious rock-face housing a half-frozen but violently active waterfall. The well-hidden southeast entrance came so close to it that one might wonder what its usage was beyond fervent mediation, though Mr. Wayne had never seemed the type.

As the truck rolled to a stop, a young man emerged from the house, and though he was barely recognizable in his early morning garb - consisting of a white wife-beater tank-top and light blue plaid pajama pants - it was still clearly Bruce Wayne, fresh as a proverbial daisy after what was probably his best night's sleep since he first left the manor, a year and a half ago. Holding onto a white coffee mug, which billowed steam in the damp morning air, he called out to the driver.

"You gonna let me kick the tires before I take it for a spin?" he asked, the boyish enthusiasm clearly evident on his masculine features.

The door swung open and from within, an older, dark-skinned gentleman appeared. He had a happy face, dotted with dark freckles which only gave those who viewed him a perceived notion of innocence and kindheartedness, which he possessed, though would never admit to. His white smile glistened in contrast to his skin, which only made him appear more pleasant. These traits, coupled with the very large present he hauled in tow for Bruce Wayne, only made the young businessman all the more pleased to see him.

"Well, I'd say you could, Mr. Wayne, but I don't know if you'd want to in your fuzzy slippers," he said nonchalantly. As if his appearance wasn't kind enough, he had the sort of voice that was so soothing it often overshadowed his blatantly obvious sarcasm.

Bruce took his hand in a firm shake, then pointed at him with his index finger while his remaining digits held onto his coffee mug. "Hey...they're not fuzzy," he corrected, before then peering down at them in sudden insecurity.

"Sure they're not, Mr. Wayne."

Inside the southeast entrance and down the hall, the two men came to an old country kitchen, attached to a large wooden pantry that smelled heavily of the cedar it was built with. The place had a strange sense of newness about it, though it appeared weatherbeaten – much the way it had before the fire.

"Mr. Fox," Alfred welcomed him warmly as the they settled into the kitchen. "Good to see you again." The old butler's calm but pleasant tone was apparent with the happy, full-toothed smile that he reserved for good friends.

"Lucius?" Bruce asked him as he reached for another mug off the rack, which caused him to smile at the familiarity he already displayed from being back at home. "Coffee, tea?" He shrugged, awaiting his response.

Lucius pulled up a kitchen stool to the large, sturdy wooden island which sat in the middle of the floor. He nodded happily. "Oh, coffee please, Mr. Wayne."

Bruce's involvement ended there. He placed the mug down on the island counter-top and watched as Alfred filled it with the steaming, strongly scented liquid. "Sugar, Mr. Fox?" he asked, but Lucius politely waved him off and shook his head.

Beyond the niceties, the three men in this room had known each other for a good long time. Lucius, having been involved with Bruce's escapades from the very beginning, had offered him the flexibility of all the resources of Wayne Enterprises. He'd known Alfred Pennyworth for some time before that, and the two acted as the sole administration team for Batman. As far as Bruce was concerned, he was not a one man army, but rather a three man crusade.

"So, tell me about the bells and whistles," Bruce said with a gigantic breath, throwing himself atop a stool and watching as Alfred handed the warm, white mug to Lucius.

Lucius smiled, and lifting one of his graying eyebrows to the young man chuckled at the idea of placing an air-horn in the redesigned machine. "Well, beyond heated seats for those cold nights fighting crime, I don't think you're going to find that very many of your gadgets have changed." Taking a careful sip of his coffee, he nodded his approval to Alfred, who beamed with pride before draping a tea towel over the shoulder of his tweed sweater and moving off to arrange something in the pantry.

"Anything worth mentioning?" Bruce asked, a kind of mischievous grin playing on his thin lips.

"Oh yes, Sir."

* * *

Alfred and Lucius stood in the dankness of the cave, the fluttering of anxious wings dancing around them, though for the most part the only thing one could hear was the sound of rushing water. Massive icicles had formed at the entrance, giving the two older gentlemen the distinct feeling that they were standing in the mouth of some hibernating monster, its jagged glass teeth opened into a sinister grin filled with white water.

Lucius stood waiting, his hands stuffed into the pockets of a lined, cozy flannel jacket of brown plaid. And with the two men watching the entrance in anticipation, there was a sudden breaking of the calm, when the black Tumbler sliced through the water and shattered the giant icicles from the roof of the cave, sending tiny splinters of cold white mist around the ankles of the patiently waiting men.

There was little fanfare for this magnificent entrance, but a grin did pass over Lucius' broad mouth when Bruce emerged from the tank-like vehicle - still wearing his pajamas, but now sporting a coordinated housecoat.

"Drives the same," he called out at them as he slid down the sloped plow front of the hulking machine. "I did notice a few added extras though."

"All the things you've come to expect, Mr. Wayne. And, as usual, no expense was spared." Lucius was triumphant; beaming with the kind of pride that Bruce had come to expect from him when he debuted one of his projects. "Same enhanced alloyed armor, but we've stripped away the titanium and added a tungsten-carbon steel alloy, which should provide added protection against explosions."

"Like bazookas?" Bruce asked with a crooked smile.

"Like bazookas, Mr. Wayne. Also, there's an added layer of sealed depleted uranium underneath, to protect you from any sort of armor piercing rounds." Bruce walked around the jet black Tumbler, inspecting it closely as Lucius continued. "So whatever kind of firepower they have with them this time... minus of course a nuclear weapon..."

Bruce grinned, tapping the rim of one of the massive tires with his slipper.

"Well, I wouldn't put it past them. Not just yet, anyway."

"Other than that, the Pod is still included with manual deployment, should the rest of the vehicle be rendered unusable...or if perhaps you just want to go for a nice breezy drive when spring rolls around again." That got a chuckle from Bruce as he continued his thorough examination. The old man's dry wit had a way of breaking his composed exterior. "Rear mounted V-16 engine, eight-hundred-fifty-six horsepower, fifteen hundred newton meters of torque, which means..."

"Which means if I wanted to tie a freight train to a winch and pull it off the track..."

"You could most certainly do that, Mr. Wayne."

Condensation puffed from Bruce's mouth, and swirled in dazzling silver from the early morning light that filtered into the cave from the curtain of water that shrouded the gaping hole that backlit him. Suddenly, he reached into the pocket of his fluffy, terry cloth housecoat and withdrew a small remote control, pointing it over Lucius' right shoulder and pressing a button with his thumb. Massive spotlights flashed on over a large, sectioned-off area separated from the rest of the cave by thick, bulletproof glass, and reinforced with honeycombed steel beams. The world could fall down around them, and the information housed beneath the mansion would remain safe. Within it was housed a plethora of technological equipment: computer screens, endless keyboards, sensor pads, accessories, and the caged vault that housed the most important piece of Bruce Wayne's artillery - the suit.

The three men marched up short set of stairs before a glass door shifted to the side to allow them to enter. As they walked, Lucius continued to speak. "There are a couple other new features. Automated software hooked up to your shiny new database - wirelessly of course - and on channels so secure systems securities at Wayne Enterprises couldn't locate the signal. Even after I hinted that might have a server leak."

Save for some of the rays that filtered in from the spotlights within the cave, the interior was darkly lit. The only other light appeared to beam from tiny, strategically-placed, ceiling-mounted halogens and the computer screens that beamed upon the shadowed swivel chairs that stood before them. Bruce planted himself in one of them and swirled around to face the multiple screens, tapping a couple of different sensors on the pad in front of him, which caused the screens to radiate more white light as they came on.

"Everything is seamless, just as you requested, Mr. Wayne. The software in here has been uploaded to the new Tumbler, and your preferences have been adjusted. We've made all the amendments to your suit that you had requested, along with shifting all the files from the secure server at research and development to the servers here." And although Lucius' explanation was clear and to the point, there was a whisper of apprehension in his voice that caused Bruce to glance at him in concern before turning around completely.

"But...?"

Lucius' eyes turned down to his feet for a moment and he smiled. Bruce had a sixth sense for picking up on doubt, worry, and all other generally negative emotions that could surround his decisions. When he had turned back up again, Lucius tried for as casual tone as humanly possible. "But... why?"

His wonderment was a puzzle to Bruce. Suddenly apprehensive of his young Master's work, Alfred smiled politely, and left without excusing himself.

"I understand the idea of lying in wait..." Lucius started, pulling a pair of half-moon glasses out of the pocket just inside his flannel jacket. He always appeared studious when he placed them on, and with his bespectacled eyes he turned to glance over and the reworked suit. "But doesn't the idea of preparing your arsenal go against all your hopes for Gotham?"

As the older gentleman made his way across the room, Bruce's eyes followed him, oscillating the chair in his direction to keep him within his sights. "I'm not sure I understand..." And though his tone was somewhat darker, it seemed very much like Bruce was offering his friend a chance to explain himself.

Lucius turned a glance over his shoulder, with a look that deepened Bruce's confusion. He stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Well, what's not to understand?" Lucius' tone was firm, as it usually was when he was on the verge of saying something he didn't particularly want to. "Seems a lot like you're preparing for a war that's nowhere near your doorstep."

With his usual coy smile, Bruce shrugged, leaning over and taking hold of a Rubik's cube that sat on the computer's dash panel. He idly twisted it this way and that. "Nothing wrong with being prepared is there?" he asked, still watching the old man as he seemed to pace warily about the room.

"No, Mr. Wayne, I suppose there's not. But I trust you would understand why a man like me would want to ask so many questions. You have a deeper understanding of what happens in this city than most others do." Lucius' tone never moved beyond mild curiosity, and his posture was casual: hands stuffed into his pockets, leaning back as if he was slightly reclined in some invisible chair. "What with Comissioner Gordon's rather _public _condemnation of the Batman, and the fact that most of these citizens are out for your blood... I wouldn't think that right now is the best time to be going out on patrol."

Whereas some might have believed that Bruce's general disobedience of wisdom or authority was a severe character flaw, Lucius viewed it as more of an opportunity for debate. The young man always provided him with a good sparring partner. "Who said anything about patrolling?"

Before Lucius could offer any sort of rebuttal, Bruce stood from his swivel chair, still fiddling with the cubed puzzle. "I have reason to believe that what we've received a glimpse of... the Joker, Harvey... was simply the battle before the war. Jim Gordon's provided his understanding, and his assistance if we need it. But the secrecy we operated in before needs to be..." And here Bruce released a small chuckle. "Somewhat more intense."

After contemplating what his young friend had just told him, Lucius offered up his thought. "You think these men who killed Brutus Carpozo are part of this war?"

"I think... it's a very multifaceted conflict. And Gotham City will be caught in the middle."

While Bruce turned toward the door which lead out into the cave once again, Lucius stood still in more quiet contemplation. He'd seen the hijacked broadcast on the television. Pretty much everyone had, but what he had not considered was the wave of rage that would storm after it. Gotham had long been a place of rogue forces, pledging to clean up the city in their own way. Bruce Wayne was himself a testament to that. But the Joker having been just the battle... that idea confounded the usually stoic Mr. Fox, and when his mind had pieced it together, he burst forth from the sliding entrance of the bulletproof glass to follow Bruce.

"Do you think these are all connected somehow? The Joker... these men in their SWAT gear? You think it gears worse then what we've seen before?" Lucius asked. The weight of his questions was heavy with doubt.

Bruce Wayne's smile was constant, that general sense of confidence that always seemed to float around him. "Too soon to tell, Mr. Fox..." he said, idly spinning the axis of the cube. "I'm sure we'll be able to figure it out."

With that friendly face of his, Lucius plucked the cube from Wayne's failed attempt to solve the puzzle, and clicked it around and around, several times within the blink of an eye before dropping it, solved, into his palm – watching as it landed with a soft, defiant thud.

"Oh, I'm sure of it, Mr. Wayne."


	24. Chapter 24: Testify

"Mental illness plagues one in every seven people in the United States, and the statistic is reported as being even higher within the boundaries of Gotham City." Assistant District Attorney Carleton Wright delivered his opening statement with conviction to the Honorable Justice William Masters. Although there was an evident confidence which seemed to ring throughout the courtroom, the Joker sat at the side of his attorney, unimpressed by the premeditated legalese that he spouted off to anyone who would hear him. "What the prosecution plans to prove is that, without a reasonable doubt, this man calling himself 'the Joker' has committed terrible crimes, for which he should be punished to a full extent of the law, but also that despite the pandemic of madness that has gripped this city, his actions, whether they are affiliated with mental illness or not, cannot invoke an insanity defense, beyond any means."

There were several people seated in the gallery that Harley had not expected to see. A few journalists had petitioned the Judge to allow for reporting in the court. While he had begrudgingly agreed, he insisted that there was to be no photography, no video cameras of any kind, and there were only to be reputable reporters from print publications. An English reporter from Reuters had asked for Dr. Quinzel's comment before court had been called, and though she'd feared appearing nervous in the face of the press, Harley'd managed to slip past the inquiring minds quickly, confidently, and - most importantly - silently.

At the beginning of the hearing the Joker's defense attorney had issued a long opening statement citing Arkham Asylum's specialty in dealing with and treating violent patients with mental afflictions, referencing Dr. Quinzel's expertly drafted report to back up his justifications. He asked that if facilities like the Asylum did not exist for patients like the Joker, then why did they exist in the first place? It was very valid point – one that sent the gaggle of reporters in the back row into a flurry of scribbling and hushed whispers.

Though he was a patient man, Justice Masters seemed to have a wash of disdain painted heavily upon his face, his hand resting gently on the gavel which sat upon his elevated oak bench. Having never spent a significant amount of time in a courtroom before, Harley secretly wished that he would call the snooping reporters out for disrespecting the court. As she turned her eyes back to shoot them a hard gaze, she spotted Bruce Wayne, dressed in a dark blue suit, intently listening to the judge and appearing to make notes of his own in a small black leather notebook.

Her eyes shot back to the front of the courtroom, as the Judge asked the defense to call their first witness. Rising from his seat, the stout man politely cleared his throat and called out, for the entire room to hear: "The defense calls Doctor Jeremiah Arkham." Here the scribbling seemed to explode once again at the back of the room, as Dr. Arkham rose from his seat in the row behind Harley and stepped through the small wooden gate and up onto the raised pedestal on the witness stand.

Politely, a bailiff held a Bible out for him. "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"Of course I do. What kind of a doctor would I be otherwise?"

Simultaneously, Harley and the Joker rolled their eyes.

Remaining by the Joker's side, the portly attorney picked up a few neatly arranged sheets of paper, greeting the doctor warmly. "Good morning, Dr. Arkham. Thank you for taking the time to meet with the court today."

Arkham waved off the gratitude. His face had that large, self-important smile painted upon it. When she saw it, Harley immediately wondered what kind of epic bullshit would spring forth from the seemingly bottomless well that was his mouth. "Not at all. The Joker is probably one of my most important patients. I would gladly offer my time to his case."

Pressing his wire-framed glasses up the bridge of his wide nose, the attorney pushed him on that statement. "What do you mean, _most important_?" It would have sounded eloquent if it wasn't so obviously rehearsed.

Crossing one leg over the other, Arkham politely rested his hands in his lap. "Not that he holds precedence over any of my other patients, certainly I try to attend all the court cases I can. But the Joker's case is unique in that it is particularly rare. He has such a profound mind; really quite the treat for psychiatric medical profession. I've been paying close attention to his file since he's been released into our care. It's my hope that coming to understand men like the Joker will provide us much needed insight into people with similar afflictions."

"Do people like the Joker pop up often in the general populace? Certainly after treating patients for nearly forty years, you've come into contact with men like him before."

"Not nearly as often as you'd think, and nowhere near as lucid." From where his hands rested in his lap, Arkham clapped them together, as if the point was especially poignant. "Usually when you happen upon a homicidal man with tendencies of mental distress, they're no where near as affluent or as sharp-minded as the Joker has proven himself to be."

"So communicating with him has been a simple task?" Upon first glance, the Joker's lawyer had a physical appearance that was homely enough to allow anyone to doubt his abilities, but his questions were eloquent, and economical, allowing Arkham just enough room to elaborate and spin... which was exactly what the old doctor loved in a question.

In his response, he chuckled heartily. "Oh, heavens no. In fact, the process of establishing communication with a therapist he could connect with took us nearly a month. I believe the final count was forty-five doctors."

"Until you settled on Doctor Harleen Quinzel?"

"Precisely."

"Do you believe that you settled, sir?"

Tilting his head in confusion, Arkham inhaled deeply and forced a thin smile. "I'm sorry, counselor, I'm not entirely sure what you mean."

At this point, the defense turned and gestured toward ADA Wright, extending his hands toward him politely. "Dr. Arkham, if you'll excuse my line of questioning, but I believe I might be able to read Attorney Wright's mind." Pausing, he stepped out from behind the desk and took a couple casual steps forward. "Right now, Mr. Wright is questioning whether or not Dr. Quinzel was the correct choice, as you seemed to have so many other therapists in mind before ultimately selecting her. Were you confident in her abilities as a doctor?"

_No..._ Harley thought to herself.

"Oh, without a doubt," Arkham responded immediately, and she gagged. "I will admit, there was _some _apprehension on my part. And I did receive some flack from my board of directors, but she managed to prove herself on multiple levels."

"Could you outline a few of those levels, to please the court?"

Clearing his throat, he nodded, though Harley was sure she saw a bead of sweat collect on the shaggy brow of the old man. "Of course. Harleen is supremely dedicated to her craft. In fact, she's had a long line of impressive awards in psychiatrics and otherwise. She remained in the top quarter of her classes while pursuing her doctorate, and was constantly in aggressive competition with the rest of the applicants. She maintains a level of organization is is unparalleled in the industry." He gestured to where she was sitting, and Harley forced a quaint smile as many in the courtroom turned to gaze at her. "She's a very determined young woman, and her work ethic is unlike any I've ever seen."

"Surely all the people who apply for this internship are similarly qualified?" Arkham was asked, and though he nodded, he seemed adamant to distinguish her from the rest.

"Harleen's resume stood out substantially from the others I had seen that year."

"How so, Dr. Arkham?"

"One word, counselor: perseverance. I know Dr. Quinzel has a lot of it, in the way she's pursued her doctorate, her position at the facility. Why, even her past as an Olympic-level gymnastic athlete. Everything she does, she does to reach a goal. She's infallible. I selected her based on the fact that I knew she would not fail."

She sat there, mortified by the praise of her superior, and held a shocked expression that seemed to match the Joker's as his head turned ever so slightly upon Arkham's proclamation of her athleticism.

'_Olympic_' he mouthed to her, but with blushing cheeks and wide eyes she motioned for him to turn around and face the front.

The defense council smiled, turned and gestured to the blushing doctor who was trying her best to watch intently without seeming too flustered. "That's high praise for an intern." There was a pause, and clearing his throat, he asked a final question. "So, finally, for the record Dr. Arkham - you have complete and total faith in Dr. Quinzel's report? The information she's provided is, to the best of your knowledge, substantiated in proof?"

"Yes, absolutely," he said with a single, solid nod.

Offering a pleased smile, the defense gestured toward ADA Wright, who sat impatiently at his desk, waiting to spring forward on Jeremiah Arkham like a racehorse out of the gate. "No further questions, your honor."

Without hesitation, Wright rose from his chair, taking a couple of striding steps toward the witness stand. Harley immediately noticed the look in his eyes - a fixed, determined gaze trained on Arkham, who appeared all but oblivious to the scene around him as he turned his attention from one attorney to the other.

There were no good mornings, there was no cordial greeting; there were only questions. "So, based on the report, Dr. Quinzel's lived up to your expectations as a therapist?" His tone was so direct that had his question been a weapon Harley thought it would have been some stone-aged club, used to whack unsuspecting mates over the head. She knew he was going to attack her credibility, and kept reminding herself not to take it personally.

Arkham, confused by the prospect of having to answer the same question twice, nodded. "Yes, that's right. I thought I'd made that clear." There was hostility in his voice now, lingering like some anonymous hidden smell in the men's locker room.

"But you've made it clear to the court at first that you and your board of directors had experienced some apprehension over the decision to assign Dr. Quinzel to the case, is that right?" There was a self-righteousness that carried Attorney Wright, as he floated back and forth, listening intently to every word that fell from the old doctor's withered mouth.

Maybe for the first time since he took to the witness stand, Arkham told the truth, but only because he knew backpedaling was potentially more damaging. "Well... yes. There had been some apprehension. It was because it had been decided that I would carefully observe the sessions between Dr. Quinzel and Joker over the first couple weeks of treatment."

Smiling, Wright's long legs carried him from the front of the witness stand back to the prosecution desk, where he pressed his finger into a document, reading it to himself. He must have been checking the date: "If you're so confident, then will you please tell the court about the session that took place on September the fifth, at 11:30 A.M.?"

Harley's mind flipped back to that day; she remembered it distinctly. That had been the day that The Joker had retaliated when she had called him on purposefully deviating from his therapy. She'd pounced on him to restrain him, and while he could have sprung at her, he had held back. Though she couldn't see how he was going to do it, Wright was clearly going to use this to try to discredit her ability to keep herself psychologically in check.

Inhaling a large breath, and exhaling it into a large dramatic sigh, Arkham confessed to a vague recount of events for the day. "I had been listening in remotely to their conversation, and intervened when I heard a scuffle. Dr. Quinzel was warned well in advance that the patient would be very prone to physical action... and though there was a physical confrontation, he did no harm to her, and Harleen was easily able to restrain him until guards were able to arrive."

She knew almost as well as the Joker did that even after six months of relative inactivity, he could still pick her up and heave her into a wall had he wanted to. But this incident had been months ago; late summer, and now it was nearly the end of January...for a moment, Harley reflected on the fact that even back then, he'd refused to hurt her when he'd had the opportunity. She'd spent over two thousand hours in logged therapy with the man, often alone, and absolutely no harm had come to her, particularly after that incident. A gentle smile crept up into her face when she watched him shift uneasily in his chair from behind the defense's desk.

That peace was shattered by the obnoxious chortle of Attorney Wright, who was clearly entertained by the idea of Harley being able to control her own patient. "You mean to tell me that this potential psychopath had attacked your young, female, _intern _therapist once, and you think she'd be able to restrain him like this on a regular basis?"

"Objection, your honor. This line of questioning is degrading to the defense's witness."

"_This _line of questioning pertains directly to Dr. Quinzel's actual ability to treat the Joker in regards to her personal safety. If he was as much a threat as Dr. Arkham was suggesting, then what's to say he wouldn't be better restrained within a separate, more well-equipped institution?"

The Judge was hesitant, and glanced at the defensive counsel for a moment. "Overruled... but tread lightly, counselor."

"It's not a prerequisite for a therapist to be colossal athletes capable of taking down deranged patients," Arkham argued back, once the Judge had given him leave to do so. "Our aim is to use our intellects to overcome, not our brawn. In fact, I was so wholeheartedly impressed by Dr. Quinzel's counter measures that it was at that point in their therapy I decided to end my observation and allow her to act on her own."

Wright shook his head quickly, befuddled by this revelation. "And how, might I ask, did you resolve yourself to that decision?"

Even Harley was curious to hear the answer to this question.

"Well, there are several reasons..."

"Being?" Carleton interrupted, even though Dr. Arkham had the full intent to explain himself.

For a second, Harley wondered if maybe they'd actually found someone who managed to surpass Jeremiah Arkham in douchebaggery.

"_Being _that Dr. Quinzel has an emotional connection with the Joker, and he seems to understand the fact that she's probably one of the only therapists that's met with him that actually _wants _to listen to him."

_Well, damn..._ Harley thought to herself. She'd expected that once he'd taken the stand that evil hand of his would burn straight through the Bible and he'd begin to recite every ill-mannered lie that climbed into his head. Instead, he was actually managing to tell the truth.

"She's been professional but firm, and they've remained friendly," he went on. "From her notes I've gathered that emotionally, he's rather callused, but intellectually, he's more than happy to share his philosophies and thoughts. Harleen is very agreeable, very non-confrontational. At first she tried to control the direction of the therapy, but relinquished it once we realized that as soon as you put pressure on him to complete a command, the first thing the Joker will do is rebel." Every sentence of Arkham's response followed the other without his usual conversational segues. He sat straight in the wooden chair upon the witness stand, and was beginning to look very much like he'd had enough.

Impressed, Carleton Wright lifted his dark, well-manicured brows, and tilted his head thoughtfully to what Arkham had just said. "Sounds like he's been relatively agreeable during therapy." There was a small, surprised chuckle that escaped the young attorney. "I don't think any of us were expecting to hear that. But, Dr. Arkham - do you really think it's due to Harleen Quinzel's competence as a doctor? Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Joker is quite obviously attracted to his therapist?

Standing up abruptly from his chair, the portly little defense lawyer called out an objection, but it was too late. Harley could feel anger radiating off the Joker as if he'd been a tiny, atomic space heater. She _had_ been expecting a question along these lines, though. Wright could argue that the question was sound, in a move to discredit her testimony, but its true intention was far more sinister. The only reason he was asking these questions was to anger the Joker, and push Harley's confidence down so low that by the time she'd taken the stand she'd slip up just enough for him to weasel his way into a definitive argument.

She was concerned about what she was feeling... though she felt better about her imposed psychiatric technique. The Joker, however, looked set to explode. One more jab from the prosecution, and there wasn't any telling what he'd do.

Harley turned her eyes up to the Judge, and found him staring very intently at the Joker, taking note of his face and posture. The Joker sat, wrists cuffed, hands balled into tight fists, white at the knuckles. He was usually always hunched over, but now his chin pressed against his chest, and with his eyes turned up, shifting around the room, Harley wondered how sinister the madman just have appeared to Justice Masters as he sat on his elevated bench. Masters wore an expression that all but begged Arkham to answer the question. Fast.

"I trust you're referring to the article printed in the _Gotham Times_, dated October 11th?" Arkham asked coolly.

"Yes, Dr. Arkham, that's exactly what I'm referring to. Justice Masters, you will see the article in question on page twenty-three of the prosecution's report," Wright explained, standing by his desk and filing through a thick blue binder.

Arkham was silent for a moment, and when Attorney Wright provided him a copy of the article to refresh his memory, he looked down at the paper, which wasn't an article so much as it was the embodiment of karma come to bite him in the ass. However, Harley was beginning to realize that maybe when it came to the old doctor, she hadn't given him enough credit where he was due. He was a master of sticky situations.

"_Attraction _is too strong a word," Arkham responded, before handing back to the article with a flick of the wrist. "Mr. Wright...have you ever had a girlfriend or your wife look after you when you were sick?" he asked suddenly.

Taking back the photocopied paper, Wright crossed his arms, arching his back in response to being questioned so personally. "Yes... I have."

"And the feeling you get from that is one of complete gratitude. This person has cared for you, striven to make you feel better, provided you with everything you need in order to feel better... and yet they consider it their _duty_. Making the Joker feel better is Dr. Quinzel's job... the term you're looking for is not attraction, it's _transference_. Usually if it's not present in a patient/doctor relationship, then therapy won't succeed."

There was a wave of relief that washed over Harley when Arkham spoke... there was no way to refute that. The point was quite simple, but also quite beautiful: if the patient did not like his therapist, then therapy couldn't take place.

Wright, however... didn't see it that way. His arms fell to his sides as a snort of disbelief escaped him. He turned his gaze to the Joker before asking in a cynical, stabbing voice: "So, how ya feelin'?"

That was it.

Harley leaned over the banister separating the gallery from the attorneys. Grasping it, she learned over and whispered to the defense lawyer, who sat trembling from the fury that the Joker was emitting. "Call a recess!" she begged.

"No further questions, your honor."

Once Wright had concluded, the scene changed dramatically. Arkham was escorted from the witness stand, and the Joker's lawyer immediately stood and asked the judge for a fifteen minute recess. It didn't take more than a single glance to the Joker's clenched fists to see his reasoning.

With a bang of his gavel, Justice Masters called out to the court. "We'll take a twenty minute recess. Would the bailiff please remand the Joker into holding cell 0194?"

Standing directly behind the Joker, Harley called out to him from under her breath. "Behave yourself... I'll be there in two minutes."

# # # # # # #

Harley felt a distinct urgency as she moved down a hall behind the scenes of the large Gotham courthouse. The atmosphere was significantly more medicinal now - there was something sterile about the white-washed walls and the beaming neon lights that made the low ceilings and tight corridors claustrophobic in comparison to those at Arkham Asylum. Cell numbers were listed on the doors, each equipped with doorbells, but the cell that Harley was looking for was blatantly guarded by bailiffs, and she could hear the Joker's lawyer speaking from the opened door.

"She'll be here any second, Joker. I swear!"

It was enough to make her move a little faster.

Once she'd gotten close enough for the clicking of her heels to announce her arrival, the attorney stuck his head outside the door and gazed down the hall to her. "Finally! He only wants to speak to you."

She'd assumed as much. As she made her way into the doorway, Harley looked to him. He sat on a bench, still cuffed at the wrists and shackled at the ankles, but the hostile look on his face softened when he saw her. "Give me a few minutes," she said to the counselor before closing the door, trying to give her patient the familiar feeling of privacy that Arkham had awarded them over the last few months.

"That Wright guy is kind of a dickhead," the Joker said abruptly, while her back was still turned to him.

Harley agreed. The prosecution had been considerably harsher on Dr. Arkham than what she had been expecting, but this was a court battle. If the legal system could make an example of the Joker and lock him away, then maybe they could send the word out to all those who dabbled in organized crime, crazy or not. "Did you expect anything else?"

He rolled his eyes, flicked his tongue out to the corner of his lips, and shrugged.

There followed a moment of silence as Harley sorted out exactly what she was going to tell him. Taking a few slow steps over, she stood before him for a minute before crouching down, leaning a forearm on his knee to steady herself. "Listen...that was just the tip of the iceberg. Wright is going to do one hell of a job to try to discredit me, because he knows my report will land you right back in Arkham, where you belong. If he can't make me look like some lovestruck groupie with an agenda to get you off the hook, he knows the Judge will rule in your favor."

From where his eyes had been cast on the other side of the room, they swept back over to her, looking down at where she had placed herself in front of him. He said nothing and allowed her to continue.

"When I get up there, he's going to hurl questions at me about my personal life, my professionalism, our relationship, the type of therapy I've been doing... you name it." Here she paused and gave him a weak smile. "But I'm ready for him. Are you?" When he was silent again, she took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. "You play just as big a part in this as I do. If you can't control yourself, I look like a shitty therapist, and it just convinces the Judge that you need to be institutionalized with more control. I mean...no anger, no outbursts, no causing a scene, no laughter, no egging on the prosecution... nothing."

"What makes you think I'd do that?" the Joker asked in a quiet, alien voice.

Harley pressed her lips together and raised a brow at him. "Do you really need to ask?"

He chuckled and brought his hands up to rifle them through his hair. "I get it..."

Patting him on the knee, Harley offered him another smile. "I know this is tough... but if we both behave ourselves, maintain some dignity, and professionalism, then it'll go back to the way it always was... just you and me." Standing back up, she watched as his head moved up along with her, glancing over her form as she rose to her feet.

"You and me, huh?"

She tilted her chin toward her shoulder in a considerate nod. "You have my word. Besides, I know what he's trying to do...it's trying to make me feel the way I did before I started treating you. Trying to make me feel incompetent, and unimportant... but it's not going to work."

"Oh no?" the Joker asked, his expression wrought with feigned doubt.

Laughing, she shook her head, defiantly placing her hands upon her hips. "Are you kidding me? Maybe your ego has brushed off on me. I'll try to make it as entertaining as possible for you, but a few words of encouragement might help."

His eyes ballooned and he scoffed, rather loudly. "_You're_ fishing for compliments?" he asked. "That's a first. Tell you what...I'll give you a compliment if you do a handstand, Miss _Olympic Level Gymnast_. Hmmm? Yeah, left out _that_ little tidbit, didn't you?"

Harley turned her eyes up to the ceiling and blushed. She had left that out... on purpose. It was a life Harley had left behind her, but she knew it would be a considerable point of interest for him.

"Well, I'll tell you what, you get off the hook, and I'll do a back flip," se teased him, but this only seemed to interest him further.

"A back flip?" His piqued brows lifted as he stood from the bench.

She nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. "Mmhm! You know, my record is fifteen consecutive black-flips," she told him, though she didn't know why she was taking this time to try and impress him. The conversation did seem to be putting him at ease, though.

He chuckled, stretching his hands up over his head and arching his back to rid himself of any stiffness. "Yeah, well...I'll have to see that one day."

She looked down to the silver watch that peeked from underneath the cuff of her black blazer. Six minutes left. "There's not enough room in your cell-" When she turned to gaze back at him, he stood right before her, causing her to jump and press her back against the wall of the holding cell.

"Who said anything about a cell?" he asked, looking down over her a few times. He took a breath and backed away from her. "Better get back. You're next on Wright's chopping block."

She knew as soon as court had been called back into session, Harley would be called by the defense onto the witness stand. She was liable to stay there for the remainder of the morning, jumping through Wright's hoops. Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, she nodded, turning back for the door.

As soon as she placed her hand on the knob, the Joker called out, "Oh! And Harley?"

"Hmm?" she turned her head quickly, shooting him a bit of a curious look.

"Go get'em, tiger."


	25. Chapter 25: Doubt

**[NOTE from the author]** _Well everyone I have two pieces of good news, and one piece of not to good news. _

_The "not-so-good" news is that I will be on hiatus between October 2nd and November 1st. I've been writing Tragedy Deferred for four months solid, and by the end of September, it will have been five full months. I had no idea how exhaustive a process writing was until I actually followed through with it. I've never been more proud of a personal achievement before and I have a lot of you to think for that. I might be making minor changes to chapters in that time... so if you receive any notifications for new chapters in that month, I apologize. That's just me tidying things up._

_So! on to the good news. Part One of Tragedy Deferred is coming to a dramatic end in the last week of September. Between September 27th, and October 1st, I will be posting a chapter everyday. Blitz weeks are so much fun! I really can't wait. _

_The second part of the good news is that Tragedy Deferred hit a couple of milestones this week. For the first time since I started posting the story, I've received over 3000 hits to the story in the last month. Additionally you've probably noticed that the story has crested over 100,000 words. That puts it in a pretty elite club, and I'm more than thrilled. I've never written a story that I was actually envisioning the end to. _

_Thank you all so much for reading! I appreciate it more than I could ever tell you. So, as a small token of my appreciation, please expect an additional chapter to be posted this Thursday. _

_Enjoy Chapter 25! _

"I'm going to assume that we have everything under control now?" Judge William Masters asked no one in particular as the entire court rose from their seats to await his arrival to the bench. But in Harley's mind there was a restlessness, like a bird feverishly flapping its wings against the bars of its cage, clamoring for escape. There was a hesitation in her, even as everyone settled back into their seats once the bailiff gave them the invitation to do so. The weight of her body dropped into the wooden bench in much the same way you'd collapse into bed after a particularly long day.

And though she sorely wished that was in bed, tightly tucked underneath the covers, Harley knew she was still a million miles away from sleep.

The Joker's defense attorney remained standing as everyone else took their seats. He was anxious to continue on with the testimony, hoping to wrap up proceedings as quickly as possible. She might have begged him to behave himself, but God knew how long the Joker would be able to maintain something resembling composure.

"Your Honor, the defense would like to continue by calling its next witness." He was a little too gung-ho for Harley's liking. She hadn't even been seated for twenty seconds. On her way back from the Joker's holding cell, his counselor had made it clear to her that her testimony would come next. She might have been prepared, but she wasn't exactly looking forward to it.

After the Judge had agreed to hear from the next witness, Harley's senses dulled, her eyes half-lidded, and she drew in a deliberate breath that made her lungs quiver as they stretched past their usual capacity. For the last six months she'd been dreading the words, and now they rang out clear as a bell throughout the entire courtroom.

"The defense would like to call Dr. Harleen Quinzel to the witness stand."

There was an unusual moment of hesitation, so much so that the judge looked up from his notes and over to her. His heavy brow was paired awkwardly with a soft gaze, one that appeared to offer her sympathy. The look was enough to rouse her from her half-conscious state. Slowly, she lifted herself to her feet and straightened her jacket, sliding past one of the board members and an armed guard. Harley had been in the row directly behind the Joker, and the entire time had lingered over his left shoulder. But now, she stepped past the attorney's tables and toward the witness stand, where a uniform-clad bailiff was waiting for her.

The bailiff held his hand out gingerly, helping her onto the podium. She mouthed a thank you to him before delicately sitting on the wooden chair provided for her. She huffed a large sigh and watched as the bailiff held out an exquisite leather-bound Bible. Though Harley never considered herself particularly religious, she placed her hand upon it and swore to tell the truth, although she would have done so whether or not God had been watching. When she'd finally collected her bearings, Harley's eyes turned up from the leather Bible and lifted to the faces that peered up at her. She'd expected to see a mixed bag of expressions, but didn't know exactly what to feel when every face she saw was arranged into a sympathetic expression not unlike that which the Judge had given her.

As the Joker's attorney cleared his throat, her attention snapped back to him, and she was surprised to see the same glance on his face as well. And then for a moment, Harley wondered... was this sympathy, or pity? Why should anyone have either?

"Good morning, Dr. Quinzel," he said simply, and then stepped out from behind his desk, craning his pudgy neck in a polite, slow nod.

Alright, that's quite enough of that, she thought, and before she responded she lifted her chin, straightened her back, and crossed one leg gracefully over another. Despite the winter cold, Harley had paired a dark suit jacket with a matching skirt and shoes. A stark, cream-colored collar jutted out from the lapel of her jacket, and exposed a delicate collarbone that she brushed a few stray hair from. She'd taken on a decidedly approachable appearance, only half of her hair up in pins with the rest of it dancing around her shoulders, which she'd pulled back to strengthen her posture.

After she'd taken another breath, her eyes darted momentarily to the Joker. He'd corrected his own posture, and did not sit slumped at the desk when she stepped up to the stand. Since he'd entered the courtroom his posture had taken on quite an array of interesting positions; prior to the recess, he'd had his head placed lazily on the desk before his lawyer had cleared his throat to correct him. But now there was almost something proper about the way the Joker sat in his chair, as if he was ready to start listening for once, instead of doing all the talking. Her mouth split and spread into the smile she often gave him, and out of the corner of her eyes, she thought she could see his gaze go tranquil.

"Good morning, counselor," Harley said to the defense attorney in a cheerful tone, nodding her head once to greet him.

He gestured both hands toward her and smiled back, but in the kind of haphazard, sheepish way a shy man sitting at a bar smiles at a beautiful woman he doesn't have the nerve to approach. "I know this case is very important to you. Thank you for taking the time to give your testimony."

"Polite, but unnecessary. I would have been here regardless of the summons that arrived on my desk two weeks ago." Which was true. Even if the defense had no intention on summoning her as witness, why wouldn't she attend? Nobody else had the integrity to answer honestly on behalf of the Joker... she would have been worried had she not been called.

The attorney smiled again and nodded his understanding. "Of course, Dr. Quinzel." His sympathetic glance had suddenly turned into awkward schoolboy self-consciousness. Where he'd worked so hard getting over his nervousness around the Joker to erase his stutter, and although he'd been controlling it all along, it had managed to slip through momentarily. "If you p-p-please, could you reiterate your educational background for the court?"

The Joker rolled his eyes at the almost embellished-sounding speech impediment, which made her want to grin, but Harley only nodded politely and turned her attention to the rest of the court. "Well... I received a full scholarship from Gotham University due to my pursuit of gymnastics. I spent about seven years there, while working an additional year on my doctorate thesis. I graduated magna cum laude two years ago, and I've been at Arkham Asylum now for thirteen months."

"Six months of which you've spent treating the Joker, during his observation period. What were you doing at Arkham Asylum prior to that?" he asked calmly. Carleton Wright, by contrast, appeared stiff in his seat when she glanced over to him, his pen held at the ready to write down exactly what she was going to say.

She spoke quickly to spite him. "My role prior to treating the Joker was to conduct daily sessions with NVO patients and monitor their progress through various psychiatric channels."

"NVOs, Dr. Quinzel?" the Joker's lawyer asked for clarification.

"Non-violent offenders."

"And the Joker is classified as a non-violent offender?" he asked, in a tone that suggested he already knew the answer.

Harley had to chuckle at that. To assume that the Joker was non-violent sounded like a shred of his own brand of dark humor. "No, quite the opposite in fact. The Joker is classified as a violent offender. Most patients who have been charged with murder or attempted murder are listed as violent, even if it's just a precaution."

There was a sense of curiosity that hung in the room, then, heavy as forgotten, rain-soaked laundry left on the line. "Well, if the Joker was technically out of your jurisdiction at Arkham, how did you come to treat him, Dr. Quinzel?" she was asked.

It was a completely legitimate question, and though it touched on her confidence for a moment, she shook her head, smiled, and invited something of a romantic spin into her argument. "Well, it would seem as though fate had intervened at that point. Dr. Arkham had made it a habit to keep in touch with me and my progress as his newest intern on the ward. As luck would have it, about a week before I met the Joker, Arkham and I had spoken about the importance of being able to read through a patient's lies."

This seemed to interest the stout man, whose ears perked up. "Lies, Dr. Quinzel?"

She smiled. "Well, of course! You can hardly count on general patients to tell the truth...let alone those with sadistic tendencies and an impressive rap sheet. As a therapist, you need to expect that your patient is going to lie to you. It's a classic defense mechanism." Harley paused to shrug her shoulders and arch her dark brows. "After all... why else do we lie? Some could argue that some people lie for the sheer thrill of it, or because they can't help themselves – a pathological liar, so to speak. But even then, one could argue that lying is an act of self-preservation or protection, even on a subconscious level."

Twisting his lips in to a contemplative frown, the defense attorney nodded his understanding. "Is the Joker a pathological liar?"

"Oh! Heavens no! In fact, most of the time, the Joker tells the truth where others in his situation _would _lie. I believe this might have something to do with the fact that the Joker enjoys watching other's reactions to his honesty. People will often head in the exact opposite direction of his instruction, as though he was lying... almost as a kind of..."

"Reverse psychology!" he proclaimed, almost triumphantly

Smiling and chuckling, Harley nodded. "Exactly right, counselor, reverse psychology."

He continued on with his original question, reiterating what she'd just said for the court's clearer understanding. "So, let me get this straight. Just days before you met the Joker, Dr. Arkham and yourself had a conversation about reading through a patient's lies."

"That's right. I believe that's why Dr. Arkham finally came to me. Though he'd gone through plenty of therapists first." Here Harley hung her head, trailing her finger over the banister in consideration of her next point. "I understand that I was a last resort...an underdog, so to speak." She retracted her hand from the banister and turned up to face the court again. "And I do have a career to establish, but I'm years and years away from receiving any kind of recognition for the work I'm doing today. I'm not going to lie, I was interested."

From where he sat and listened, the Joker perked up just a little more. It was a statement that struck his lawyer as well. "Interested?"

"He was a challenge, you know? Sure, the Joker seemed unbreakable... but to be the therapist to get him talking? That was something I had to pursue. Dr. Arkham said during his statement today that the Joker's mind is a rare one, and he's exactly right. However, I was concerned that my fascination far outweighed my talent. It's been made clear to me now that the board of directors for the facility was also concerned about my abilities." Harley's lack of expertise _had _been a considerable source of her feelings of inadequacy earlier on. Having accomplished so much with Joker for the last six months had done a lot to push that inadequacy aside.

"D-d-d-d-did you feel overwhelmed?"

The left corner of her mouth lifted gently, a small dimple carving itself into her cheek. "At first..." she whispered in a voice that was usually better reserved for a bedroom. Her eyes had half-lidded and dropped to the floor. When she lifted them again she took in the Joker's expression. He sat in his chair very squarely, both feet planted on the floor, knees bent at ninety degree angles, and although he wasn't slumped over, his elbows rested at the very top of his thighs, hands hanging limp in their cuffs. He watched her as intently as a wolf watches a sickly fawn.

"The Joker is after all, very intimidating..." She trailed off for a moment, her eyes still on him before she cracked a large smile, turning to gaze back to the defense. "But there's more to me than meets the eye, counselor... I can be fairly intimidating myself. After we had established a rhythm, the Joker came to notice very quickly that I couldn't be bullied. It opened us up to excellent conversation."

"And you're not overwhelmed anymore?" he asked, in something of a more personal tone.

She shook her head gently. "Not at all... managing one's patients thoroughly is much easier then managing ten or more patients on a temporary basis."

The attorney moved back behind the defense's desk. "Would you say this dedication of uninterrupted time has helped to harbor your success over that of the other forty-five doctors?"

"Among other things," Harley quipped, smiling.

"Such as?"

She chuckled, glancing off. "Well... such as..." She stifled a louder laugh by clearing her throat. "No offense to those other doctors, but... when you have a patient that exudes charm and charisma like the Joker does... having a personality certainly helps to loosen him up a bit."

When the Joker's lawyer blushed, a few of the reporters at the back of the courtroom chuckled, the sound echoing throughout the room. Though clearly amused by the doctor's choice comment, Judge Masters banged the gavel against its rest and peered down at Harleen with a lightly patronizing glance that she playfully cowered away from. "They'll be enough of that, Dr. Quinzel."

That bright smile of hers spread apologetically across her face. "My apologies, Your Honor..."

"Will that be all, counselor?" the Judge asked, the tiny grin on his face fading.

"Yes, Your Honor. No further questions."

"Wonderful. Prosecution, your witness."

Harley had not been looking forward to speaking with the abominable Carleton Wright. But where she'd been expecting him to leap from his seat and promptly down her throat, as he had with Arkham, he remained calm, seated at his desk, elbows rested upon the table, hands interlocked together, pressed up to his mouth. Finally he spoke, softly and calmly, his mouth hidden by his hands. His tone was shy, as if he was a young man admitting to some obvious school yard crush. "Good morning, Dr. Quinzel."

She merely blinked, nodded once to him politely, and smiled. "Good morning, Mr. Wright."

He moved back from the edge of the table, his spine pressing itself against its backrest. "How are you?"

Ah... she knew what he was doing. Classic egotistical behavior. His polite exterior, the gentle and almost delicate tone he used with her - he was softening the blow for what was sure to be a particularly hard line of questioning.

She maintained her smile. "Very well, Mr. Wright. Yourself?"

He furrowed his brows and stood up from his chair, making his way closer to the witness stand. He didn't answer her question, didn't make a sound. Although Harley was aware of his confidence as he strode toward her, she didn't know what kind of manipulating shrapnel would come flying from his mouth.

Once he was about ten feet away from the witness stand, he said to her, "You really seem to have won over the room, Dr. Quinzel." He sounded impressed, through from over his right shoulder, the Joker didn't really appear as impressed so much as shocked by the cajones on this guy. Wright stood almost directly in his line of sight, no more that six feet in front of the table the Joker was sitting behind.

"I thought I'd made that perfectly clear with my statement about personality," she quipped, and again a few chuckles from the back of the room, but Judge Masters let it slide.

Wright cracked a smile and stepped away from the defenses desk, and when he did, the Joker's stern face looked back at her. "Did ya use that charm of yours on the Joker as well?" he asked, and turned to glance over his shoulder at the collected young doctor. "Is that how you got him to... loosen up?"

"Well, not exactly." Harley liked to believe that having an actual personality wasn't as hard as it looked, but seeing as the prospect was apparently more rare than she had previously believed, it wasn't hard to see why the Joker responded so readily to her. "But then again, someone with the Joker's charisma reacts very well to casual banter, idle chit-chat, friendly meanderings... so to speak."

This must have interested Carleton Wright, because he spun around on his heels and placed a very thoughtful index finger on his chin. "Really... 'idle chit-chat.' Get any actual therapy done in the last six months? Because I notice that in your report, you listed thirteen different possible psychoses as potential ailments for the Joker... but no actual diagnoses. Why is that?"

Trying to discredit her this way was not going to work. "Have you ever been in therapy, Mr Wright?" she asked him casually.

A large, slippery smile spread across his face. "I'm not required to answer any questions you pose to me, Dr. Quinzel."

"Whether you have been or not is certainly a subject for debate, but anyone with the smallest amount of psychological education will tell you that therapy can be an exhaustive process... and in particularly complex cases, such as the Joker's, patients can be in therapy for years before they come close to having a breakthrough, or even being properly diagnosed."

This just seemed to push Wright even further into disbelief. "Years? I don't think that speaks well for the psychiatric art, now does it, Dr. Quinzel?"

"Objection!" the defense called out. "Your Honor, if Attorney Wright is here to hate on psychiatry, then I think he's at the wrong hearing." A quip that caused a few amused chuckles to escape those in attendance that day.

"Attorney Wright, this is not your first rodeo... quit treating it like it is. Keep your opinions to yourself and question your witness." Judge Masters pointed firmly in Harley's direction and she plastered on a rather large shit-eating grin.

Wright rotated his anxious shoulders and sauntered back over to his desk. "To appease the court, Doctor, would you please recite the observed potential psychoses you have discovered in the Joker over the past six months?"

Harley narrowed her bright blue eyes. "Are you testing me, Mr. Wright? Or perhaps you didn't read the report."

Wright's eyes jumped up to Judge Masters, who was already leaning over on his bench toward Harley, and her eyes turned to look to his large, hovering, seemingly omnipotent figure. "I know that was hardly an outburst, Dr. Quinzel," he told her, "but do try to keep it to yourself and answer the prosecution's questions."

She nodded apologetically, then turned to Wright. "Categorically, or alphabetically?"

"Well... seeing as how I'm trying to _test _you, and additionally, that your report is written categorically, let's say we do alphabetically, hmm?" Wright crinkled his nose and grinned like a cat must grin after thinking he's finally caught the canary.

Harley took a deep breath. "Alphabetically?" she smiled devilishly at him, and Wright's expression dropped. "Well there's: borderline personality disorder, conduct disorder, histrionic personality disorder, insomnia, intermittent explosive disorder, manic episodes, narcissistic personality disorder, multiple symptoms of psychosis, pyromania, schizotypal personality disorder, selective mutism, and of course, tardive dyskenesia of the tongue."

The Joker started clapping as soon as Harley finished, and several members of the press exploded in laughter.

"Order!" Justice Masters called out. "Or you'll all find yourself in contempt of court!" Though that wasn't much of a threat to the Joker, the reporters immediately fell silent, and all eyes in the room turned back to Carleton Wright.

"Impressive, Dr. Quinzel..." he said, "but do me a favor. Treat me like I'm a two year old. Briefly explain histrionic personality disorder to me."

Raising her brows in response to these constant challenges, she nodded. "Commonly known as HPD... it's characterized by excessive attention seeking, flirtatious behavior. Usually exhibited by egocentric people."

"...And intermittent explosive disorder, what about that?" Wright asked.

Now Harley just rolled her eyes, wondering if he was biding his time to think up a better question. "IED is characterized by bouts of excessive anger, often to the point of uncontrollable rage... people with this disorder are very prone to violence, can easily kill."

Back at his desk, Wright slid a finger down the list she'd just recited to the court. "Narcissistic personality disorder, pyromania, borderline personalities... you know what I think, Dr. Quinzel? I think you used a lot of sexy words to further blind justice." Taking his hands off the page, Wright took a few steps back to her. "You're a smart girl... you know a jury would eat this up. Twelve of Gotham's finest citizens... they're not gonna know exactly how dangerous someone with contact disorder is, or what tardive dyskensia is. Which means you get to educate them and spin the truth whichever way you want. Doesn't it?"

There was a pause, and Harley's only reply to the question was a cold, piercing stare.

"Or _maybe_! Maybe you finally found your meal ticket, you know? Patting non-violent offenders on the head, not exactly gonna get you on the cover of an American psychology magazine." Wright sighed and shook his head at her, pacing around the room. "No... you know that keeping the Joker in Arkham is going to get you straight to the top of Gotham's psychiatric ladder. So why wouldn't you be here? Fighting to keep your dream alive - well, it's either that, or wait around for the next supervillain Batman manages to wrangle up for you."

"Enough!" she called out, firmly placing her hands on the banister of the witness stand. "Now, ask yourself a question, Mr. Wright. This is a man who covered his face in makeup, wore a purple and green suit, killed four of the five major mob bosses in Gotham, and is covered in scars... you think this man doesn't have emotional problems?" She waved over to the defense attorney, who handed a file to the bailiff, who in turn provided it to her. "I trust you've glanced over my patient's file, have you not?" she asked, and Wright responded by holding up his own copy of the Joker's. "Good! Then if you will please turn to page fourteen of the medical examiner's report."

A small, embarrassed groan escaped the Joker, and he sank in his seat while Harley removed her glasses from her inside jacket pocket and placed them over her ears, balancing them low on the bridge of her nose. The visage cast a patronizing and doctorly tone over her, giving her the distinct appearance of maturity over the frustrated Carleton Wright.

"What am I looking at?" he asked.

She didn't even need to look over her notes to provide him with a general explanation, and so answered without taking her eyes from his disdainful glance. "These are photographs and reports from the medical examinations office at Arkham, and another outsourced from the city of Gotham." Pausing, she offered Judge Masters a moment to look over their copies of the file. After a few seconds she turned to glance up at him. In his face was couched a strange look, one that encompassed both disgust and pity at once. He looked from the file down to Harley, and nodded for her to continue on with her explanation.

"What you're seeing is defensive scarring on his upper torso and arms, which we estimate to be at least twenty years old. Medical examiners have placed the Joker's estimated age being between thirty-five and forty...therefore it can be easily theorized that this man is a product of terrible beginnings. So many mental disorders settle in between the ages of fifteen to twenty: schizophrenia, depression disorder, borderline personality disorder, conduct disorder... and experiencing violence in the home during these times can cause severe psychotic breaks."

"And you think this is the case with the Joker," Wright stated, proving to the rest of the court that, despite his lack of enthusiasm, he _was _actively listening.

"Yes, Mr. Wright, I do. There are things that have happened to him that he's taken years to bury, and will take me years more to uncover. Will the Joker ever rejoin society? Probably not... but this is a man's life we're talking about here... a lack of morality might separate him from society, but it doesn't separate him from humanity. "

Wright looked up from the Joker's case file to where she sat on the stand, her tiny fists balled and resting gently on the banister as she leaned forward in full conviction. "Humanity is judged based on how we treat the weakest of us all. You cannot discard him so easily. Does past trauma excuse him? No... but without understanding him... then who knows how many young men out there will fall prey to their own mental illnesses, and in today's times end up far worse than the Joker?"

When the stern look on Wright's face dissipated, it was replaced by a smile. A villainous smile. A smile that struck fear into her far more than even the Joker's did. He was trying to win for the sake of winning... and would stop his little tricks, like the kid who always knows the best way to cheat at tic-tac-toe. "Very cute, Dr. Quinzel. Very heartwarming. The psychopath killer who just couldn't help himself because 'Daddy' used to beat him up, huh?"

_Oh God..._ Harley thought to herself as Wright took a few cocky strides toward her. His assertive nature and sweeping assumptions were the only two things the Joker would need as an excuse to fly headlong across the courtroom to rip his jugular vein straight from his neck. From the corner of her eye she thought she saw him shift in his seat, but tried not to look directly. Harley tried cutting him off with an answer to bring his tirade to an end, but he bulled over her.

"Who's to say exactly _how _he got those scars, hmm? Why, he could have been in a bar fight, or better yet, running from the police...or maybe he got them from his past victims. Truth is - you don't know exactly how he got them, do you, Dr. Quinzel?"

Right now, Wright's jugular was starting to look good to Harley as well. "No! No, I don't, Mr. Wright, but neither do you... and I think that's why they call it 'reasonable doubt', isn't it?"

The words came out so quickly she hardly stopped to take a breath, and he was clearly taken aback by her hurried answer. The two of them stood, wide-eyed and staring at one another. She'd nailed him. There was no way his questioning could recover from that blow. Harley knew it, Wright know it.. and unfortunately for him, Judge Masters knew it. In fact, Harley couldn't resist peering up at the older gentleman from where he sat on his bench, and heard an amused snort escape his throat.

Closing the file and stepping back toward his desk, Wright dropped the file on the tabletop. With an exasperated sigh, he landed heavily in his chair. "No further questions, Your Honor..."

"Well alright them." Judge Masters motioned for Harley to step off the bench and back over to her seat. "After _that_... I don't think it's asking a lot for everyone in this room to consider the outcome of this very seriously. Myself most of all." He took a deep breath, let it out, and was thoughtfully silent for a few seconds. After tapping a couple fingers against his lips in contemplation, he finally nodded. "I'm going to give this three days of deliberation. Should justice have need to move to a criminal trial, the Joker would then be remanded to Blackgate Penitentiary to await his court date. However, should he return to the Arkham facility... I will have a personal conversation with the therapists on his case."

There was a sense of relief that filled Harley there, but also the regret of having to worry about his decision for the next three days. Now with millions more miles between her and sleep, she flinched upon hearing the banging of gavel... and where the instrument of justice had previously excited her, now she found it a great annoyance.

"Court is adjourned until March 1st, at eight o'clock."


	26. Chapter 26: Jump

"This is your idea of a going away party?" the Joker asked with a particular level is disdain lingering in his throat.

As the two of them waited for the hammer to fall on the Joker's case, Harley had tried to keep things as lighthearted as possible, though it was difficult seeing as her patient wasn't exactly a ray of sunshine. He seemed to enjoy the idea of being negative, despite his darkly joyous exterior.

"Since when did I refer to this as a going away party?" Harley shot a scornful glance ahead of them as they walked side by side down one of Arkham Asylum's lesser used corridors. "Listen, I might be optimistic, but I'm a realist. I don't see it happening, but there is a slim chance this could end up being your last night in Arkham, and if it is, I want to make it as memorable as humanly possible."

Scoffing, he lifted a skeptical brow. "So, in other words... a going away party."

"Oh, shut up..." she chided, which caused him to snort in amusement.

As the two of them walked, Joker glanced around the corridor, twisted his head at odd angles, turning and arching to look at the hallway from different perspectives. "I've been here before," he quipped in a thoughtful whisper before gingerly taking the woman's hand and linking arms with her.

Looking down at their intertwined limbs, Harley's face turned up to him with a noticeable blush. "Hmm?" she squeaked rather innocently, though the Joker's eyes continued to watch the ceilings, which were considerably higher than the rest of the sardine can rooms he'd been in before.

"Hold on," he said and then collapsed on the floor in such a way that it seemed that Harley would have to drag him across the concrete.

Another squeal escaped her, and she had to bend over to keep ahold of him, before she huffed in the strain of keeping even his upper half up off the floor. "God damn you're heavy! What the hell are you doing?" she queried him, but he continued to observe the room from this angle for a couple seconds before a revelation overcame him.

"I _have_ been here before!" he called out excitedly, before he released her and made his way a few more doors down before standing at one and waiting for her.

She was halfway between amused and impressed as she calmly made her way after him, much like a parent following around an overactive child on the playground. "Amazing how you remember these things. Being dragged from the room jogged your memory?"

"Ah, good times. It's important that we always remember the good times, my dear Dr. Quinzel..." he said to her in a sing-song tone and withdrew the card key from her breast pocket, swiping it over the sensor pad. He pushed open the door and held it open for her in a Wonka-esque fashion, his hand rolling over his wrist several times as he invited her to walk in before him.

This time she arched her own cynical brow. "Ah yes, forever the gentleman you are!" she exclaimed and looked over her shoulder as he closed the door behind the two of them.

Indeed, the room was familiar. It was exactly where Harley and the Joker had their first major altercation. The ceilings were high and dark gray, and in the center of the room was a large, indigo chaise, overstuffed, and basking in the light of halogen bulbs. It had been nearly five months since the two had been in here, but somehow, for some reason, Harley knew the two of them reflected of it fondly.

However, the Joker seemed more slyly aware than usual, if such a thing was at all possible. He sucked a breath through tightly puckered lips to express his excitement, before wringing his thickly callused hands. "You know, if you were looking for a little bit of privacy, it looks like you picked the right place."

Rolling her eyes, Harley shook her head at his continued attempts at sexual nuance. "Nice try, but I don't think you get it," she said and slid out of her lab coat, handing it over to him. She almost casually hopped onto the velveteen chaise, running her hands over it, before laying on it much the way he had all those months ago: legs crossed at the ankles, hands behind her head.

With her lab coat draped over his arm, he watched her with an inquisitive glance for a moment, before a grin pulled at the length of his scar. "How is taking off an article of clothing and laying on a chaise supposed to suggest anything but the obvious?" he asked her, shrugging.

Tilting her head toward him, she smiled devilishly. "Oh Joker, I'm giving you something I know you want far more badly than the obvious. I've known you long enough to know that you are a man of intricate subtleties, rather than a man of transparent pursuits." And with her nose she gestured toward the chair that she, herself had sat in months ago. It had placed upon it were an aluminum clipboard, note paper, and a pen.

When the thought dawned on him, his smile seemed to impart his sense of wonder. Above his often meaningless flirtations and leading questions, the one thing the Joker had been consistently curious about was her mind... maybe even more than she was interested in his.

Instinctively he slid into her lab coat, which was a couple sizes too small for him, though he made it work. From the inside breast pocket he retrieved her glasses, fitting them over his ears and across the bridge of his nose. Snatching the clipboard from off the chair, he firmly planted himself upon it, crossing one leg over the knee of the other and trying very hard to look distinguished. In a last ditch effort at professionalism, he licked his palms before slicking them through his hair to draw his wavy, somewhat ratty locks into a kind of James Bond, pompadour style.

Though it was impossible not to watch him from the corner of her eye, Harley tried in vain to keep the smile from edging up her face, and it was damn near impossible when, after clearing his throat, the Joker spoke in his best, though still terribly performed, Freudian German accent. "My dear, I zee all of der issues! You, are in love wiz a ver-ry bad man, hoo iz corr-rup-zing your zsyche!"

Immediately, she threw a hand over her mouth to mute her laughter, but it couldn't stop her from bouncing with hilarity from where she was laying upon the chaise.

Continuing on with his act, he chided her, "Zis iz not a joke! And I zemand to take zis seriously!"

But with his feigned aggression, Harley nearly folded in half as she held her stomach, her boisterous laughter echoing throughout the room before fading into little girly giggles. She waved at him to stop and he watched her with a soft face as she settled back into the chair.

"C'mon now... I'm serious," she told him, but it was an idea the Joker didn't seem to understand.

"Serious about what? You've decided that you're no good at your own job and you want to give me a crack at it?" he asked her, though it was clear that that wasn't the case. Sure, she'd done this in an attempt to entertain him, but also to slick his curiosity.

"Well, this way you get to legitimately ask me questions without having to win a hand of poker," she expressed to him. It appeared to be an idea that captured his attention, until he confessed an idea of his own.

"What do you say we get the best of both games, since you don't seem to be very good at poker, and instead of having to answer a question or take off an article of clothing, you can answer the question as well as take off an article of clothing," he asked with a sense of hopefully childishness.

Propping herself up on her hands she looked at him with a distinct sense of curiosity. "How on Earth do I get anything out of that?"

He seemed consumed in thought for a moment before somehow striking some sort of illogical compromise. "Well, if you want, every time you answer, I can take off an article of clothing."

Harley snorted. "We've been through this, you've only got four or five pieces of clothing on right now. Like it or not the excitement would finish off for me pretty quickly, wouldn't it?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "S'ok... I'm usually pretty quick in that respect myself," he told her almost too casually, which caused her to erupt in another bout of laughter as a coy smile painted itself upon his face.

In her writhing she slipped over onto her stomach, leaning on the curved sloping backrest of the vibrant chaise. "C'mon, Joker... I'm serious. Ask me a question, make it count for something," she urged him on, but he took his time pulling his eyes off the empty note page and away from her cleavage in her slightly awkward positioning.

"Why do you let me get away with all this? If any of the other patients tried half of what I've tried with you, they'd get locked up in solitary confinement."

He had a point. She'd ratted on significantly less dangerous patients for far less. She'd say she let the Joker get away with murder, but maybe that was pushing it. Shrugging her shoulders, she rifled one of her long-fingered hands through her hair. "I dunno... You make me laugh. Why would I want to inhibit you from doing so? You don't stop a comedian in the middle of his _schtick_ because he might get too racy. You wait it out, go for the ride and see how hard he makes you laugh. You get more than you bargain for that way... sometimes I end up learning something from the stuff you say just to make me laugh."

Long ago, she'd awarded the Joker the license to take his therapy into any direction he willed it. There were no awkward questions about his past, no sterile, scientific personality tests that Jeremiah Arkham had insisted upon. There was just the current topic of conversation and her training to guide her. Harley took note of every topic change, every little quip, every ideology, and it gave her a sound foundation of facts to base the Joker's personality on. He was correct in assuming his didn't fit into any preexisting mold or profile... which might have been why there were so many potential psychoses that he was exhibiting.

Allowing him to question her was just another tactic to examine his mind. You could tell a lot about a person by the questions they asked.

While he had been considering this, Harley had slid down the backrest of the chest and flopped over to her back once again, and though he had nearly a full view of her she had to strain to see him out of the corner of her eye.

"Why do you think I try to make you laugh?" he asked, finally.

Such a simple question, really. Asking someone for an opinion was just another way of fishing for compliments, but she obliged him, knowing he was the kind of man who divulged more information the more sugar you poured over him... though it was a good opportunity to corner him as well. "Well... I think there's a number of reasons."

"Such as...?"

"Hmm... such as the fact that you're a common case narcissist who can't help but find pleasure in being funny. You like it when people laugh genuinely at what you say, from what I can tell," she confessed, and it was an honest answer. "Not that there's anything rare or concernedly wrong about being a narcissist. It's one of the most common mental 'disorders' if you can go so far as to call it that."

"I like having my ego stroked?" he asked, though the answer was pretty obvious.

"Aww, come on, Joker... everyone does. You make me laugh because... well, if you want to get scientific, my laughter validates your hilarity to you, which is a point of pride," she explained and shifted over to her side, snuggling into the sloping backrest.

For the most part he kept his eyes on the notepad, nodding slowly. "Well, I think my humor is lost on a lot of people."

She shrugged. "Well, maybe... but I'm laughing with you, not at you. There's a difference."

He was silent for a moment, as if he was expecting her to say more, and after he reached his hand out and motioned for her to continue, she gave him a lopsided look. "Well, you said there were a few reasons. Why else do you think I try so hard to make you laugh?"

She pondered it for a moment, her lips twisting into half a grin. "Well, alright... but if I show you, you have to promise to admit to it," she said, and though the Joker wasn't a big fan of ultimatums, he rolled his eyes before nodding.

Harley had seen the look a hundred times. She'd envied it since she was a little girl. It was that look men get in their faces when the 'well-to-do' Richard Gere character snaps the lid playfully down upon the fingers of an unsuspecting Julia Roberts when she reaches for a very expensive diamond necklace in _Pretty Woman_. She'd practiced it all through her teen years, begging her mother to pay for expensive dentistry to provide her the perfect smile. So, when she spread her bright red lips into her porcelain, feline crescent, she received her own ego stroke. Because if her smile would coerce a grin out of a man like him, who couldn't those teeth seduce?

When he saw it, he grinned himself, chuckling at her revelation. "Joker, I spent five years in braces for this," she said, pointing to her mouth. "You think I don't know how to use it?" tilting her eyes up to where he sat in their little game of role reversal. "I figure you above anyone else would know the importance of a good smile."

He nodded reassuringly a couple times, his eyes flashing between the pad of paper and her face. "Wouldn't you say that's kind of manipulative?" he asked in the slippery way he has when he was making an accusation of someone's most prominent characteristics.

She shrugged. "Well... Maybe... But I don't see the harm in it. I wouldn't use it with any sort of maliciousness in mind, and I only use it when I'm genuinely happy," she explained, which might have been a little too much information, since it appeared to be the part of her sentence that really grabbed his attention.

His head snapped up and he offered her an impressed glance. "So, I suppose I should be flattered that I see it a lot, huh?"

And that was just the question she needed to break eye contact, turned to her back, and face away from him. "Well, maybe you should just consider yourself lucky," she explained, but he wasn't falling for that either.

There was something about the man that honestly befuddled her – how he could so easily readjust her, like a chiropractor straightens the knots in a spine. When she was sad, he made her laugh. When she would pout, he snapped her out of it. When she was down, he built her back up... and when she couldn't sort herself out, he made it all make sense... and maybe that was why she smiled so much.

And now she recognized the danger in therapy. Although she didn't know if it was the room's acoustics, or the chaise in which she sat, something about the place almost made her thoughts audible, as if just being in here plugged her mind into some encompassing stereo system.

Before she had the chance to acknowledge the change of the atmosphere of the room, he sat down on the edge of the chaise, much like she had sat on the edge of his bed as he had been ailing.

Somehow she felt so tiny with him sitting over her like that. She'd been nestled between the conjoining backrests of the chair, her eyes scanning the shiny silver buttons of its studded surface. He wore that smile – the smile that suggested he knew what she was thinking... even though she didn't even know what she was thinking. Harley hated that! She hated that he knew some priceless piece of information about herself and yet would not bring himself to tell her, waiting for her to figure it out on her own...

Unless that is... it had something to do with his ego.

Luckily for her, it did.

"Oh, I'm a pretty lucky guy..." he said to her in the raspy tone she'd come to expect from him when he was being a wise-ass.

"Yeah? Well... that makes sense. I've always considered myself to be particularly _un_lucky," she quipped, her fingers tracing the deep lines in the fabric where the buttons had been stapled into place, giving the peculiar piece of furniture its distinguished look.

The Joker was silent as he looked over her, and in his silence he leaned his elbow along the backrest that ran along the length of the chaise, using his hand to prop up the side of his head. He looked like an entirely different person with his slicked back hair and her dark rimmed glasses.

Finally, in the midst of what was beginning to be a relaxing silence, he asked her what he'd asked her once before in jest, but now with a whispered amusement in his voice: "Seeing as this is turning into one hell of an ego boost for me, why don't you just admit it, huh?"

"Admit what?" she asked him with a coy smile. And although she tried very hard to maintain a solemn composure, a tiny smile crept through, regardless of how utterly exposed she was feeling.

"Admit it... You got a little thing for me, don't you?" he asked, the same whisper of humor settling in the quiet whisper of his theatrical voice.

She smiled bashfully, still toying with the imprints of the buttons. "So what?" Harley whispered back in a kind of monotone that suggested sincerity where inflection never could.

But where she had expected there to be laughter, his face... well, the smile had vanished and his dark eyes fluttered in a barrage of confused blinks while his head shook itself in astonishment. He appeared very much like he hadn't heard her correctly, though he had.

Harley herself would have been taken aback by such a revelation, had it not been exactly what she'd been subconsciously longing to say. Instead there was a certain amount of relief that sprang from her heart which left her relaxed and settled posture unchanged, and for the first time since they'd met, he was the one who appeared unhinged.

"What's the problem?" she asked him, her eyes still tracing the tailoring of the velveteen sofa before flashing up to him. Her expression was coy, somewhat shy, when she had gained the nerve to look at him. "You wanted counter-transference? Well you got it..." And while she'd actually managed to shut him up for a moment, she continued, trying to dig herself out of this hole. "How could I not? You've given me no reason to hate you."

"Besides killing fifteen people?"

"This is Gotham City... worse crimes are committed every day. You were theatrical, that's why people started paying attention."

The silence was so thick it filled the air, and made it difficult to breath - so much so that Harley had to readjust her posture rising up from cuddling within the slumped back of the sloping chaise and pulling herself away from him. He had remained in very much in the same position, but was leaning back – not in disgust, but as if he wanted to provide himself with a better look at her.

Shrugging heavily, she shook her head. "I wouldn't take it that seriously. After all, what kind of a therapist are if you can't care the least little bit about your patient?"

"Hey!" the Joker called out, nudging his nose in her direction, as if to pull her away from any single depressing thought that traipsed through her mind. Angling his head and gesturing toward the large empty space in the room behind the tacky piece of furniture, he said "I think you still owe me a back flip."

"A...a... a back flip?" she stuttered. Harley had found the peace of mind to bare the tiniest corner of her soul, and he was asking her to do a back flip. While she otherwise might have been offended, and at thatt moment she would have done anything to get off of that couch and out of that conversation.

He nodded firmly, and only once. "Yeah, do a back flip."

Unimpressed, her eyes half-lidded. "What do I look like? Your monkey? Why not just give me a pair of cymbals and recite Gilbert and Sullivan?" The idea that he had managed to rip her away from such a weighty and seemingly ego-boosting conversation both astounded and confused her.

In what materialized on his face like a flash of genius, his eyes widened, and he gave her a look that couldn't appear _more_ impressed. "Now that's entertainment! It's just too bad you don't have any cymbals, but hey! Give it the ol' college try!"

Harley's face, on the other hand, depicted sheer devastation. "Are. You. Kidding. Me?"

The sound of his hands suddenly clapping together was enough to rouse her from the chaise. "Hup, two, three, four!" he called out to the jarring sound of his clapping. Hurrying to her feet, she felt like a young marine at roll-call, rushing to get into place, but looking down at her attire, she felt very much like she was in a recurring nightmare. Instead of some imagination-killing leotard, she was wearing a knee length pencil skirt, a blouse, and a set of pumps – her usual garb for their sessions.

"Uh... Joker..."

"You're not flipping..." he chided before she gestured down toward herself.

"I can't do anything in this."

"So take it off."

Sighing heavily, Harley tongued her back molars, wondering if he was joking, but tried to remain attentive to his request. Contemplating his suggestion for a moment, she seemed to nodded in nonchalant agreement. "Okay."

His expression dropped when he watched her take off her shoes, and he moved to question her. "Wh...what are you doing?" he stammered, stretching out his hand as if to stop her.

Gasping as if embarrassed, her blush turned into a devilish smile "Hmm.. bark's worse than your bite, huh?" she asked and winked at him, as he attempted in vain to wipe the shock from off his usual twisted mug. "Relax Joker, I'm just taking off my shoes." Though, while she attempted to put his mind at ease, the Joker's somewhat out of character bashful reaction to her striptease stopped short, and he had cracked a smile.

Her self-consciousness got the better of her. Placing her hands on her hips, she leaned forward "Well! What's so funny?" she spat at him. He turned around the aluminum chair he'd just been playing doctor in, sitting in it backwards, his thighs on either side of the backrest. "Nothing, nothing..." he waved her off. "It's been a while since I've seen you out of massive shoes, I forgot how short you are."

Harley _was_ short. She didn't stand an inch over five-foot-three-inches, and while the Joker stood just over six feet he nearly had a foot on her when she wasn't wearing four-inch-tall high heels.

"Yeah, well..." she started, and hiked her skirt up to her upper thigh. "I'm all leg, as you can tell..." she said in a softer tone, stepping behind the chaise to the large empty span of the room behind it. It had been a good long time since Harley had felt like she was about to perform. Indeed she had been sixteen the last time she had been at a large gymnastics competition, but nearly fifteen years later, the feeling was the same. Her stomach felt strangely empty, and shuddered back and forth against her sides.

She took a deep breath, glancing over at him. "I trust you can see?" she asked him with a whisper of attitude.

Flashing her the 'O.K.' gesture with his right hand, he nodded. "Perfect view."

"Fuck, I can't believe I'm doing this." Taking a deep breath, she bent forward at the waist and threw herself backward. Her body moved in a perfect arc, her hands nearly coming into contact with the floor behind her before her feet lifted off the ground and moved as if on an invisible axis, up over her head and back into contact with the floor.

When she was upright again, her arms presented over her head, she looked over at him, and was surprised to see that he had risen from his seat to watch her. "Jesus, I was beginning to wonder if you would actually do it."

Her expression dropped. "Wha...what do you mean? You asked me to!"

A wide grin spread on his face. "Alright, this time do it with Gilbert and Sullivan."

Shoulders slumping in disbelief, Harley took a few steps forward to where she had been before she'd flipped backward. Taking a glance over her shoulder, she gauged the width of the room. It was enough for seven arced flips.

With the same deep breath from a moment ago, she produced the same backflip, but succeeded it with another and another while reciting the comical Gilbert and Sullivan lyrics "I am the ve-ry mo-del of a mod-ern maj-or gene-ral!" came her sing-song voice, landing her seventh flip at the sound of the last syllable. Taking another breath, she proceeded to flip forward once again. "I've infor-mation vege-table, ani-mal and mine-ral!" Upon landing, she gave him a crooked smile, her arms held out at her sides in formal dismount display.

The Joker, however, sat smugly in the chair, arms resting atop the metal backrest, grin fused to his prideful attitude. "Jump..."

"How high?" she shot back, almost immediately with a quirked brow.

"Now _that_... was exactly what I wanted to hear."


	27. Chapter 27: Justice

"All rise for the honorable Justice William Masters."

The courtroom was dotted with people, who shuffled to their feet as the bailiff called for order upon the Judge's entrance, which lacked any sort of fanfare or movement from the reporters, who were once again held at arm's length at the back of the room. His large dark robe swept ominously over the wooden steps that led up to the oak platform. He took his seat and sat in a distinctly dignified way, grayish eyebrows arched high upon his wrinkling forehead, hands folded together upon the desktop before him.

The room quivered in his presence, the tension pulled high and tight like piano strings over Niagara Falls. Though no one seemed it, everyone was ready to leap to their feet at a moment's notice, and heartbeats rang like hummingbirds in flight – frantic, majestic, skittish.

Everyone, that was, save for the Joker, who sat very much as he had three days ago - hands cuffed, slumped down in his chair, feet firmly planted on the floor, forearms resting upon his thighs. Though it all seemed too much to bear for the rest of the courtroom, for him, it was just another day of waiting for the hammer to fall.

All the major players of this mawkish scene were there: A.D.A. Wright; who with wrung hands waited upon the Judge's final word; Dr. Harleen Quinzel, who feared not for herself, but rather for what she stood to lose; Commissioner Gordon, whose keen interest in justice had nothing to do with vengeance or vendetta; Dr. Jeremiah Arkham, who said a quiet prayer for the width of his wallet; and silently, and almost invisible to the rest was Bruce Wayne, who watched with a fathomless set of dark eyes, as if attempting to see what no one else could.

Judge William Masters bore the weight of all of them, and with a prepared breath, cast his deary eyes over the room as he conjured the will to speak.

"I haven't taken any aspect of this case lightly," he began, his hands lifting over the paperwork strewn before him. "In fact... I'd say this has been one of the most difficult deliberations of my tenure. Not because the answer is clear... but because the answer seems so unjustified."

Here his eyes opened wide, and with another deep breath he leaned back in his large leather chair. He turned the chair with his legs to swivel back and forth, rocking in contemplation. "Nevertheless, I wanted to explain my reasoning to you, as best I could. Not to excuse myself, but rather to make it perfectly clear that justice is indeed fair, and free of opinion or objection to the truth...but it doesn't taste good to all who sample it.

"Gotham is torn on the issue of the Joker. Some consider him to be the philosophical prophet of a new age...one who is not insane but instead possesses a kind of _super-sanity_ that we are not yet able to understand due to our societal and moral structure. Others still view him as a menace to society – a corrupter of the young and ill... an enemy not just of the state, but of our minds, of our sociological norms."

There was a very audible heartbeat before he continued. "Now... I like to consider myself an intelligent man; but I am merely a man. Men are biased, have opinions, prejudices, fears. However, I have, over the last three days, in modesty, attempted to remove myself from the imperfections of the mortal mind. I believe I've stumbled upon the divine." And here, a bemused chuckle escaped his throat. "True justice."

In his seat, Attorney Wright perked up to the sound of what he hoped would be a conviction. His victory was so much more than a mere statistic in his conviction rate - it was a one-way ticket to greatness. The anticipation flickered out when the Judge moved away from his ultimate decision, and once again into a kind of poetic prose.

"This man... whatever his name may be – is clearly disjointed and troubled by a debilitating mental illness. One that has caused him to do horrendous things to the people of this city. He is mean-spirited, and he is vulgar, and he questions the very fibers of the world we live in. And in his madness, he's done something very important: he has made us _question _ourselves." And as if the room had not yet been held frozen under the impassioned words of the Judge, it seemed now to plunge into depths unstudied, and misunderstood.

"Not all great men maintain great beliefs. Surely it is the ones who push us to change our perspectives that are just as close to righteousness as those who push us to do good. This world is not filled with good, and much like the scales of justice, there must be balance. We cannot all be heroes. And while I'm not saying I agree with the Joker's skewed mindset... I do believe that you must have _villains_ to make the heroes worthwhile."

The room fell deeper into silence, all eyes fixated upon the thoughtful man as he placed both palms flat upon his desk, his eyes passing once more over the information before him. Although he spoke with confidence, it was easy to see that he remained conflicted over the decision he was about to unleash upon the court. But then... in this case, it was impossible to be supremely confident on such an important matter.

It wasn't long before he took another breath and moved from the psychology of the decision to the decision itself.

"With all of that in mind, I believe I've come to a decision that offers as much compromise as I am willing to extend. The truth of the matter is that blatant and obvious crimes have been committed here. Horrendous crimes. And based on the information and the massive amount of evidence I've been provided, The Joker would be convicted on at least two of the fifteen murder charges that have been filed against him." There was a long and heavy sigh that escaped the Judge, causing him to look up from the notes and to all those who sat waiting in the benches below him. "This fact alone has caused me to take pause and truly contemplate the outcome. Conviction of one murder charge will place you in prison for the rest of your life, but two... two will land you on death row in this state. The point of this observational period, as Dr. Quinzel so eloquently pointed out in her testimony, was not to diagnose the Joker. Diagnosis of such severe mental problems can take years.

"And while it's not yet certain if the Joker is exhibiting these issues, the prosecution has failed to prove, through the evidence provided or by questioning witnesses, that the Joker was indeed sane during this time."

Wright slumped over heavily in his chair, mouth agape with shock. He'd done absolutely everything he could to dispel Quinzel's testimony, but introducing reasonable doubt of the Joker's insanity had made it a nearly impossible task, one that he would never be able to rectify. He looked, above all else, completely devastated, and all too easily able to predict what the Judge's ruling would be.

"Essentially, without this diagnosis, this man's life rests in my hands. In a criminal trial, he would be tried by a twelve man jury and most likely convicted of two murders. The fact is, though, that the Joker is mentally ill on some level, and until that level is assessed, and with a reasonable doubt, there is no way any Judge would convict him."

There was a collective gasp, and the room seemed to flutter in the same way one's heart does on the first drop of a steep rollercoaster.

"Therefore, I'm returning the Joker to the care of the medical professionals at the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane for further treatment and diagnosis, in the hopes that he can be further understood, and that a massacre of this magnitude can be prevented from happening again." Reporters chirped in quiet excitement at the back of the room, little skittish moths dancing around a flame, but the Judge silenced them with a look.

"However, _Mr._ Joker..." he said, in a suddenly stern voice, leaning steeply across his desk to look at the man. "Some professionals in the security field seem to be under the impression that an escape attempt by you is _imminent_. I'm here to tell you, right here and now... if you so should attempt an escape and fail, there _will_ be a criminal trial, and you _will_ be convicted, and you _will_ be placed on death row. And _should_ that happen, sir... may God have mercy on your soul."

The gavel sharply banged against its rest, and the wave it produced pushed the teeming energy of the room over the edge. "Court is adjourned."

Everyone in the courtroom jumped to their feet, all of them seemingly unleashed from the gate at the Kentucky Derby. Reporters rapidly began taking notes, each of them clamoring to be the first out the door to catch witnesses as they walked past. For some the enthusiasm was evident - smiles were painted on the side of the defense, and Dr. Arkham may as well have had cartoonish dollar signs painted in the irises of his weathered eyes. Things had all gone according to plan, and now that the Joker had been permanently placed in his ward, securing financiers would be as easy as plucking dandelions from the garden of an abandoned house.

What luck for him that he should finally have something to boast about. "Oh the Joker?" he asked, when those who counted themselves among Gotham's elite inquired about the danger of housing such a psychopath. "Well of course, safe and sound! But you know, our security department is always looking for new ways to invest in the safety of Gotham's citizens." And those clowns ate it right up. It was easy to see why, though in all honesty a straitjacket and a bolted door were enough to keep the Joker restrained. Costs were low, profits were high, and Gotham could consider itself safe, even if it was only a matter of time until the next crazy came around to threaten their lives.

Arkham beamed with pride. So much of his hard work had been poured into this case, and now as a novelty, he turned to his left and took his accomplice's small hand in his own. Surely Harley deserved some of the credit.

While she normally would have been nauseated at the simple thought of touching Arkham, Harley took his hand in a firm handshake and cast her elation on his for just a moment. Then she turned back to the Joker, who was being restrained for transport back to Arkham Asylum. This had been everything she'd hoped for in the last five months, and when the Judge had cast out his ruling, Harley had grasped for it like a lifeline - like some rope cast into the pit she'd found herself in. She had been the first to her feet, and would more than likely be the last to sit back down.

Now the real work could begin.

But...throughout the time she had spent in this courtroom, she'd reflected heavily upon on which side of the truth she was standing upon. How had she answered the questions poised to her? Had she been merely honest in her testimony, or had she been moral as well? The lines of truth bent and yielded to emotions along the way, and she was in the business of emotions. Certainly they had a place in justice, just as the air had a place in the room: present, and yet impossible to weigh or measure.

Her assumptions on these things might have come at the cost of her ethical integrity, but she had used them to purchase a man's life... and in the end, was that such a high cost?

She had been wondering, ever since that day on the roof of the asylum, how spending their days together might be when there wasn't this weight hanging over their heads. As if by some sudden strike of fortune, the weight had been lifted and removed like a tumor. There was nothing but freedom now, so much so that Harley just couldn't wipe the smile from her face...a smile that faded only a little when she peered over toward A.D.A Wright.

Wright was somber and resolved. Had he been overly ambitious? Possibly. He'd nabbed the case file before any of the other assistant attorneys had even had the chance to look at it, and now the thought was dawning on them that perhaps it was only because none of them had volunteered. The case had always been impossible to win, and yet Wright had known, _known_, with every fiber of his being, that if he could somehow succeed, if he could somehow push the Joker into a criminal trial, he would be the next in line for Dent's vacant seat.

Now the seat was further away than ever before. Now, how could he possibly redeem himself? He would be the laughingstock of Gotham's principle court, all because of the ambitious young doctor and her seeming adoration for this madman. This lunatic.

He'd danced with career suicide, and he'd lost.

Now where could he hang his hat? Appeals? Records? How could he go back and face the music? His entire career had led up to this moment, and he'd made nothing of it. Had he been capable of such an impossible feat? Yes! He had it in him. How else could he had made his way through the bar and to his rank in less than ten years? How could he turn his back on all his hard work?

For all that work to fall into the hands of the Joker...

He could feel the eyes on him, those once hopeful eyes of the people who had begged him to succeed. Those who wanted to see the Joker fry for the terrible acts that he had committed against a city that was already lame and sickly, limping away from this predator as the rest of the world watched. Someone had to see how hard he had fought, tooth and nail, to get the Joker to been seen by justice. And now they'd turned their sightless gazes away from him for the last time... unless, that was, the Commissioner himself had been paying close attention.

Jim Gordon stood toward the back of the room, and the entire time he had worn only a look of ambivalence. It was hard for him to tell during the proceedings whether Wright would truly succeed or not, but in the end, what had be been praying for? Had he been hoping that the blade would fall across the Joker's neck?

No. How could he? Jim knew in his heart that for justice to succeed vengeance was not an option - was never an option. He'd taken on the weight of the case, but not to settle the Joker's perceived guilt or innocence. He was clearly guilty. Jim's focus had been not on his culpability, but his capability. Was the Joker capable of further crimes? Of course. Would he produce these crimes in an attempt to strike fear into the hearts of the citizens of Gotham? Without a doubt. But would anyone in their right mind do such a thing willfully, and without the hesitation that a conscience would hopefully produce?

Now on that, he wasn't sure. Jim knew that in his own mind, such acts would leave him in a panic, fearing for his life and the lives of the people who loved him. How could one kill simply for the idea of it? He didn't know... he didn't want to know. But without a doubt, the Joker knew... and although it was not a characteristic to be proud of, the Joker wore it as a badge of honor. That was a badge that Jim would never wear. A badge that the Joker had tried to thrust upon many - including Batman.

But unbeknownst to any of them, Bruce Wayne would never wear that badge. For Bruce Wayne knew, more than anyone else, that mercy is the badge of nobility. And maybe Bruce Wayne would never wear that badge, either – but Batman did. Batman wore it every night.

How could he answer as a man? A man is weak, and subject to his own biases and hatred. Bruce Wayne was, in a way, impartial to these feelings. At one point this had been different. At one point he would have pointed with a trembling finger and a cocked gun in the face of any man who threatened to take a life. He'd done it once before, and it was a monster that he'd cast into the dark, into the cave, and into the suit. Though cool and shrouded by mystery, Batman was his passion for justice, his hate for those who sought power and money over the mortality and ethics that would piece this city back together.

Bruce Wayne's attendance was superficial at best. He knew the reporters would say he put in an appearance because of his placement on the board. He would put on his little show, smile for the cameras, and hope for the best. But in his heart, he looked on, his gloomy eyes settling on the scene that unraveled before him.

The way Harley seemed to dance almost happily beside the Joker as he was escorted into the back halls for processing - the way she seemed to move to the beck-and-call of his every subconscious demand...she did not just look like his therapist. Bruce could see it, and though he'd prayed for the judge to see it as well, it had gone largely unnoticed, expertly covered by her expertise and professionalism.

And then his eyes turned to the Joker.

The Joker, who simply sauntered away from the surging scene of pomp and circumstance that was unfolding before him. He, too, watched as reporters pounced like hungry tigers on the unnerved patrons of the courtroom as they filed out. But what was it that played out in his brain? What curious and depraved ideas were unfolding within him as the rest of the world watched his little victory?

What else could there be, save for the demonic, unbridled sound of laughter?  
It pierced through his mind and shuddered through his body. There was no pride, there was no justice, there was just the stupidity of mortal men and the self-righteousness they carried along with them. But behind the laughter, there was solace - the solace that comes with knowing that the battle has been won, and the war has now begun. The ideas that he had planted as seeds now spread like weeds, and while some chided his release, there were others still who were celebrating.

You can protect the people who house it, and you can kill the men who nurture it, but you cannot rid the world of an idea. And once the word had gotten out, there was little anybody – not Wright, not Justice Masters, not Commissioner Gordon - could do to stop it. And that was why there was only laughter that wafted through the Joker's mind: because the idea was also the punchline.

And the punchline was just too damn funny.


	28. Chapter 28: Running

"Harl?" came Molly's muted, gentle voice from the open doorway of Harley's cramped office.

It felt like it had been a lifetime since she'd spent any significant time here. She remembered loving being so close to all the action, spending long hours reading over the cases of other mad men in between sessions - but the thrill of having an office and friends had somehow quickly worn off. Before she knew it, it had become months since she'd last seen Molly, let alone spoken to her. And even with the girl standing at her office door, Harley still only gave her to the most casual of glimpses as she compiled several stacks of paper into a thick file.

"Oh, hi Molly," she finally said, nonchalant and more curious about why she was here in the first place. After only a few seconds of eye contact, Harley went back to rifling through her papers, trying to get herself organized following the trial. So much useless information had been included in the Joker's file for his recent court date, but now that it was all done and over with, she was happily purging the excess. She'd been so busy since yesterday that now, as the sun was setting through the small window, half-hidden by a shelving unit, Harley was just making her way to the Joker's first session as a semi-free man.

So she didn't pay much attention to the way Molly was fiddling awkwardly with the cuticle of her index finger, seeming to focus on picking away the dry skin. Finally, Molly gathered up the courage to speak. "I just wanted to say congratulations, you know?"

From where Harley had been standing, behind her tiny, laminated plywood desk, her head jerked up to look at the other woman, squinting over the bridge of her glasses as they sat perched upon the very tip of her nose. "Oh?" She couldn't help but find this little tidbit interesting, considering Molly's opinion on her objectivity.

Clearly struggling to swallow her pride, Molly shifted against the door frame and nodded a couple of times, hesitantly. "Well, yeah... I mean, I watched you work your ass off to keep the guy in here. No matter what anybody thinks of him, it's hard to believe that he belongs anywhere else."

That was the truth. If there was one place that the Joker would never find himself, it was rotting away in a cell. That is, if Harley had anything to say about it.

"Well," Harley started, forcing a smile across her fiery red lips, "I'm glad you approve. I can't help but think that there are a lot of people who are beginning to believe the same thing." She didn't just think it, she knew it. That very morning, there had been an article in the _Gotham Times_ painting Dr. Harleen Quinzel as the matron saint of battered minds. She was touted as a hero, saving a sickly man from mortal peril, and casting her objectivity upon the jaded citizens of a jaded city. Everyone would be impacted by it, save for one.

Save for Molly.

"Oh, I never said that it was impossible to believe...only that it was hard." Molly stood, believing herself vindicated in her beliefs. Though she had occasionally shown pity for the Joker, it was easy to see that it came nowhere close to sympathy, particularly as she stared down the young doctor, arms firmly crossed across her chest.

Harley's large, darkly shadowed eyes sharply narrowed. Them is fightin' words. "Oh? Well then, please, Molly... enlighten me as to how you can work in a mental facility and still believe a patient to be completely responsible for the crimes he has committed." She had developed quite the silver tongue as a result of the Joker's subtle teachings, and enjoyed deploying them against this unsuspecting girl.

Molly appeared physically struck by the question. Harley's tone had been so cold and so unfriendly that Molly had a look of total confusion to hear it fire out of Harley's mouth. Regardless of her shock, she answered without hesitation. "C'mon, Harl! It doesn't a take a rocket scientist to see that he's been manipulating you all along. You think if it was anybody but you that he would have spouted off the same steaming pile of bullshit?"

She seemed convinced of the idea that Harley had only questioned herself once. The conclusion Harley drew then made her confident enough to chuckle in Molly's face as she continued collecting her case files. "Oh Molly...you're right! God, you're so smart!" The compliment was backhanded to say the very least. Sarcasm ran so thick through the statement that it could have slithered after Harley across the room as she stepped away from her desk and toward the door. "That's why you're the doctor, and I'm the nurse, right?"

Molly's expression flattened. It was so easy for Harley to see the disappointment in the poor girl's face that it sent the cool chill of victory down Harley's spine. She just had to continue. "You know... I can't help but be flabbergasted by the fact that you - someone who has spent absolutely no time with the Joker - seem to know _so _much about the way his mind works. You'd think with that kind of insight, you would have stopped hitting the cabernet long enough to actually pursue your doctorate." Harley spat at her like a cobra spits into the eyes of its prey, and slid past her into the hall, file in hand.

Starting for the elevator, Harley felt Molly's eyes following her down the hall. Not to be overcome, Molly inhaled deeply through her nose, her chest puffing out as her lungs swelled like overstuffed balloons.

People in the nurse's station at the end of the hall were looking up to stare. "Harley!" she called. "You are the Joker's victim, just like everyone thought you would be...but he's not killing your body, he's killing your mind."

Upon hearing her, something stopped Harley dead in her tracks. Though her feet told her to move forward, step into the elevator, and forget all about Molly, some demonic force twisted her spine, turned her around and pushed to to stride right up to the nurse, pushing a finger in her face. "You don't know what it is," Harley said slowly, "to hear one man say one sentence, and feel as if you've spent your life with your eyes closed. I've learned more about the Joker, more from the Joker, than you'll ever learn about anything in your pathetically minuscule lifetime." Her voice reached some indistinguishable pitch, and her tone touched slightly on her mother's east-end accent. Where months ago her anger might have scared her, she now embraced it.

But while she might not have scared herself, she certainly scared Molly, who now stumbled against the door frame of Harley's office, trying to pull herself back into her comfort zone, even as the enraged doctor pursued her. "You don't know anything," Harley told her, "and the next time you try to school me on my job, it'll be the last conversation we ever have. You got that?"

Wow! Harley thought to herself, and although her face did not convey her amazement, she loved the feeling of power that shot from the nerve endings in her spine, through her limbs, and across the sinuous appendages of her hands. This was how the Joker felt every time he had it up on someone. The fear in Molly's face shone on her like the warm glow of a hot sun. It gave her life, breathed air into her lungs, lit a fire in her heart. It proved to be almost too much to take, and before the other girl could muster the courage to respond, Harley turned and walked away.

"Please close the door to my office when you're done shuddering in the doorway, would you?" And as quickly as a fading nightmare, she disappeared, the elevator speeding her up to the seventh floor.

* * *

The Joker had been waiting for her. He sat as he always did, feet firmly planted on the floor and hands folded in front of him. Due to the lack of dangerous circumstances of late, no guard stood outside to lend Harley peace of mind – and she didn't need it. The Joker took care of that for her.

She had appeared almost joyous when she swung open the door to their usual interrogation room, and he had pondered the look on her face briefly before putting on a grin of his own. Her clipboard in one hand, her labcoat securely hanging around her shoulders...everything was the same as it had been, except this time he was just a little more free, and soon, free altogether.

"Ahh..." he cooed, almost expectant of yesterday's outcome. "Someone went celebrating after the good news. I'm amazed you're not more hungover." Surely that hadn't been the case, though. Harley didn't seem to have one outlandish bone in her body.

She slid out of her labcoat the way she always did and draped it over the back of the aluminum chair. The smile on her face suggested pride, but it was it was an emotion he'd seen in Harley only recently, and there was no way her pride from yesterday's victory in court could have carried over to today. If the Joker knew one thing about pride, it was that it was fleeting.

"Me? No, no...not me. I was just, in a good mood." She pulled up her shoulders in a blithe expression. "I just really let someone have it, and it's sick, but it gave me this amazing feeling, like nothing could ever touch me now."

And if the Joker knew another thing about fleeting emotions, it was that confidence often fell into the same category. "Hm! Well, that's good news," he started, scrunching his face into a falsely thoughtful visage. "I guess my job here is done."

She shook her head, scoffing as she placed her clipboard upon the table. "Ha! You wish... If anything I'm going to be under even more pressure to maintain something resembling progress. You and I were lucky, we got by on the skin of our teeth. I deserve an Oscar for the amount of bullshit I fed the judicial system on your behalf."

Perhaps it would have been easier to break Harley's good mood had the Joker not spent the last five months convincing her of his flippant nature, but right now, he was dead serious. His face scrunched up once again as he shook his finger at her. "No... I don't think you understand."

"What's not to understand?" She erupted, still riding a high like a some unicorn galloping over a space-blown rainbow in some cheesy eighties music video. "You and I have beat the system!"

"Harley..."

"We don't have anything to prove to anyone anymore!"

"Harley!"

"We can be as free as we want..." Her joy and excitement peeled away like the layers of an onion. And though she maintained her composure, something in what she'd said dipped beneath the surface of her naiveté.

He piqued a brow, and leaned toward her ever so slightly. "Free, inside cinder block walls?" he asked her finally, relishing the way her face faltered - you can see in someone's eyes the exact moment their heart shatters into a million pieces. He could see that confidence in her crumble, and in the middle of his chest knew, knew that he was only one who could bring her to her knees like this. It was not justice, or fear of prosecution, or lost money, or social disassociation that had sent her fleeing from her course.

Now she understood, and understood further as he went on. "You know what I miss? Fresh air, a rare steak, the way the pavement crunches under my feet. I miss gasoline, and the way you can feel the heat of a fire on your face." He turned away from her, and rolled back in his chair before suddenly coming forward again. "But you know what I miss the most? I miss the dignity." He growled through clenched teeth, flourishing his fingers against his collarbone before his next point. "Because there's a certain amount of pride in what I do, you've seen that for yourself. Just now... that joy in your heart..." He trailed off, both of his hands rolling over one another before his chest as he took in a deep breath. "When you know you've just ruined someone's day."

Face blank and mouth agape, Harley only shook her head, gathering the will to speak. "Don't do this..." came her most meager of whispers.

"Do what?"

"This...don't do this now. Don't prove them right. Don't sit here and strike this house of cards I've built..." And as if some dormant dragon had burst forth from its rickety cage, her tiny fist seemed to materialize out of nowhere and pounded against the tabletop, and she rose from her chair. "That _I've_ built! Convincing the world you didn't have a leg to stand on when you had _two_! You have no idea what I've done for yo, Joker. You think my job is to sit here and get schooled by you?" she demanded, pointing her finger at him much as she'd done to Molly just moments ago.

He rose on those two stable legs of his, and Harley was greeted with the fact that she had no fear when he pierced her with his downward gaze. "Well then, why are you here?" he finally asked. "To profile me, learn my mannerisms for the betterment of mankind?" he asked in a sing-song tone that riled nausea in the young doctor. "You're dreaming if you think you had any other intention than to learn from me. I know that. You know that. You came, and I taught you, and now that I've taught you, you need to know more."

"I spent five months investing my faith in you!" Harley spat back. Her voice was a growl, now, venomous and cold. "Listening to you, writing you down to figure you out! You can say you want about getting your freedom back, but we both know why you're really leaving."

The Joker took a step to his right. Harley quickly followed suit, and before the two were completely conscious of it, they were circling around the table, one slowly chasing the other in an intense game of cat and mouse. "Oh? So enlighten me, doctor," he asked, tone just as cruel, his eyes narrowing as he tried to predict her intended revelation.

It was like some pent-up bout of madness within her, or some bloodthirsty jungle cat, or some rabid beast just lifted that clenched clipboard over her head and sent it hurtling across the room, exploding in a shower of paper that swirled around them like snowflakes. Her hair had been tossed about in the flurry, endless strands of melted chocolate that splayed and wavered in the heat of her rage. "You've spent your life evading detection from the police, from anyone who came close to you. You held all the classic defense mechanisms: the outrageous clothing, the boisterous attitude, right down to the face paint. But in here, you're stripped, you're nude, you're ugly and raw, and the world can see you here. You're a canary in a cage... but you're still the center of attention. You don't hate it here as much as you thought you would."

The temperature of the room shot up as the Joker's anger became evident. He remained calm but stern, circumventing the table in a long, thoughtful gait. "Oh that high powered perception of yours...it's like a laser. More! Tell me more!" His mocking hand beckoned her, as if he meant to grapple with her, but with each step she continued to evade him.

"You can't be ignored - you have, from every angle, people observing you, trying in vain to understand you - _entertaining _you. This is the best gig in the world. It doesn't get any better than it does here!"

"Shut up..." he growled.

"No! I will not shut up, because you're a _coward_, Joker, you're a coward because it doesn't matter how good the song and dance is! It doesn't matter how all these men fought to understand some shred of you and failed. It's not worth running away from, it's not worth leaving alone."

"_Shut up!_"

"You want out because the one thing you _didn't _expect was to come in these rooms and look someone in the eye who understood you at your core...and not for the make-up, or the green hair, or the lies, or the madness, but the philosophy, the truth... the truth that hurts so _much more_ than lies ever could." Harley didn't falter so much as she froze, stranded in time. Her mind was a flurry of ideas. They showered down like rainfall, hitting the ground in slow motion, and it was as if everything he ever said came rushing back in a flood. It knocked down the pillars in her mind where logic, and reason, and education had stood and pushed them down in a rage of white water.

But where time had stopped for her, it only raged on for the Joker, who swiftly took her by the shoulders to shake her. His grip on her was so tight and so unforgiving that it threatened to break her in two. "You know that feeling? You understand me soooo deeply? Then why? Why do you need me here to lecture you on the importance of these convictions, hmm?"

When he shook her, her large, watery blue eyes jostled with the onset of captured tears that perched themselves precariously on the edges of her eyelids, threatening to topple over and expose her weakness. She only stared back, and his face twisted and contorted into a displeased snarl, a sudden far cry from his previously consuming rage. Curiosity plagued him far more then he would have admitted to, but as she stood there, caught in some internal hurricane, there was a pang in his chest that physically struck him, like an arrow.

It was sudden and it was painful, and it told him the truth... the truth that hurt more than a lie ever could. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt that, after spending all this time trying to figure him out, she'd finally realized something about herself... something he hadn't put his finger on yet.

"You can't go..." she confessed, through heavy saliva and heated breath.

And now Harley was the enigma, so much more than he had ever been. She, on the verge of tears, stood vivified in self-revelation, and he...now he was the one who wanted so badly to know what she had discovered in that frozen moment in time. He, who had spent his life vindicating his own existence, needed to know, had to know why she needed him.

Now, for the first time since she'd seen him... the eyes that stared back at her were not black, hollow holes of voided emotion, but an almost luminous, chocolate crimson that desperately searched her face for answers. "Why?" he whispered, low and quiet. And when she failed to answer him, he placed his hands on the sides of her face to keep the blinders on him, and him alone.

"Why?" he asked again, trying in vain to suck the desperation out of his voice.

The silence was the loudest the two had ever heard, and while it stretched on, their minds were screaming. Screaming to know, screaming to be heard, screaming to be put to rest, though none would come.

In his desperation, the Joker had pushed her back against one of his reviled cinder block walls, and they listened as the seconds ticked past as though shaving years off both their lives. They rolled past the way office hours do – long and punishing. As if time wasn't already short enough. Beneath where his hands had landed on his face, he felt her tears trap themselves between his fingers, warm and cold at the same time.

After a moment more of waiting, there was some release when she placed both her hands on his forearms - not in any attempt to pull him away, but perhaps just to validate his presence there. He could feel the cold clamminess of her hands through the canvas of his jumpsuit, and he wouldn't have cared, except for the fact that his nerves were going off like sparklers on the Fourth of July.

Letting out a shivering breath, the muscles in her neck tightening, and with her expression somewhere between lost and astounded, she whispered, very clearly:

"You can't go... because I'm nothing without you, and I feel like I'm so _much _right now."

And while both of them tried in vain to adjust themselves to the atmosphere that the truth had created, they could only stare back at one another with the same look of mystification and astonishment. But for one to understand the implications of such a thing to say, one must first understand the Joker, and as Harley had a firm understanding of these implications, she swallowed, hard... hoping the feelings would somehow get choked down as well.

"I can't do this... I can't be what you want me to be... unless you're here."

"No..." he whispered, his eyes half-lidding, his head shaking several times from left to right. "I don't believe that..."

Her tiny, feminine sniffle, filled with loss and defeat, seemed to will him forward, and she nodded again to convince him.

"No... I don't believe that for a minute," he whispered in a tone that was so alien, and yet right now so expected. There was a kind of affection in the way his hands slid down to her neck, the way his fingers laced into the hair at the nape of her neck, the way his thumbs arched underneath her soft jawline.

And although they continued this nearly silent argument for a few seconds – the gentle bobbing of her head, and his attempt to reassure her - there was an aggression buried deep below all this tenderness. Aggression that might have pulled its way to the surface, had it not been for the fact that Harley suddenly felt herself pinned to the wall under the sudden weight of his lips against hers.

They had not been shocking, or crude, but simply brought silence to her aching mind, and lent a tremendous comfort to a breaking heart. There was something immensely crooked about his kiss that she'd never felt before, that made it uniquely his. It was, at once, both intensely disturbing and wrong, and surprisingly passionate, nearly gentle.

There were a number of surprises that Harley would pretend she hadn't imagined afterward – how, as she had stared back at him in shock, his eyes were _closed_, and appeared as peaceful as when he'd been sleeping. There had been no anger on his face, no hate, no other ideas at that moment. She'd been surprised at how he'd calmed her jumbled mind with this most idyllic and unexpected of gestures. But what surprised her most of all was that after the initial shock, after the sharp gasp of breath she'd taken in through her nose - she too had closed her eyes, and threw away everything she'd ever worked for: her ethics, her education, her career, her life. She knew this was wrong, and immoral, and went against the grain of everything she'd ever been taught...

But she knew, without a shadow of a doubt in her mind, that she never wanted to kiss anyone else's lips but his.

Her heartbeat slowed, the worry melted away, and when he finally pulled away, he only did so by an inch, close enough that she could still feel the warmth of his breath against her neck. From where he lingered, a shuddering breath escaped her and her eyes remained closed. Her hands still loosely clasped his forearms, doubtless because she needed something to hold on to.

"I shouldn't have done that..." she whispered.

"You shouldn't have done that..." he whispered back.

"But I did..."

"But you did..."

He pulled away a few more inches, and looked down at her, petite and minuscule beside him - and yet foreboding, dangerous, and above all those others beneath him. To the Joker, the natural order of things was himself at the lead, and the rest fighting to catch up. But this girl...

This girl...had come closer than anyone else.

They stood that way for a long moment, her eyes peering up at him regretfully, and his peering down at her intently. He drew a slow, deep breath. "You haven't lost all faith in me have you?" he asked in something resembling his normal voice.

His misplaced commentary never went unnoticed by her, but she answered the question nonetheless. "I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who would call me stupid, but I guess it's all downhill from here..."

He smiled, one of his genuine smiles, and reached his hands a little further into her hair. "Is that so?"

With his question somewhere between a purr and a sinister growl, she couldn't help but feel a little unnerved by the affection. For his sake, she considered it a moment longer."I trust you..."

"Good..." His tone had been flat, but it wouldn't matter, because she wasn't going to remember it.

Without another second's hesitation, the Joker took a hefty handful of her hair, swiftly stepped to the side, and effortlessly brought her head down against the metal table.

There was a loud thud, and a rumbling as the metal vibrated like a thunderclap. The sudden impact knocked Harley out cold, but the Joker carefully wrapped his arms around her limp body and lowered her onto the floor. Once she was there, he smoothed out that splash of chocolate hair, and settled her into a comfortable position. Then he reached up to take the swipe key she carried with her from the breast pocket of her labcoat, still draped where she had been sitting a few moments ago.

Standing, he made his way to the door, and glaring out into the empty hallways of the building he hated so much, he found himself hesitating. He stood, wide and menacing in the frame of the door, but turned to glance over his shoulder to where her tiny body lay on the floor, out like a light.

But within a few seconds, his features hardened themselves again, and he turned and swept out from the room.


	29. Chapter 29: Bitter

"We find ourselves in very formidable circumstances." Arkham's voice boomed grimly from the head of the long boardroom table of hand-carved oak that stretched like vertigo across the impressive executive meeting room. The place looked like it belonged in the hallowed halls of one of the Ivy League schools that dotted the East Coast. Though most of these doctors had been educated there, the only thing that separated these men from their other alumni were the glasses of scotch that sat casually in front of them.

Circumstances might not have called for scotch, but even though Bruce had only been here a few times, he knew for a fact that a decanter of it was always under the sliding cover of the antique globe that sat in the corner, next to the winding mahogany bookshelves. It hardly mattered to him; there were other thoughts flooding through his mind that had coaxed him into making a rare appearance at one of these board meetings. Bruce had displayed a discernible interest in all of the Joker's exploits, and today was no different.

"What of the negative implications from the press?" one of the older trustees who sat to the left of Dr. Arkham asked in a particularly slow drawl. He reminded Bruce more of a droopy-faced cartoon hound dog than a man, or a mix of Alfred Hitchcock and Winston Churchill – his cheeks appeared to pop to the sound each time he pronounced the the letter _P_.

Locking his hands together, Arkham placed the collective fist underneath his nose and drew in a contemplative breath. He was silent for a long moment before he suddenly extended his hands out into an exaggerated shrug, an expression of considerable disappointment lingering on his face. "What are we supposed to do? I have a few PR people on the task, but I should at least have an excuse for the Joker escaping the facility."

"That's exactly right, Dr. Arkham. You have no excuse," Bruce interjected from the end of the table. The police reports that the board had been privy to seemed to suggest that the Joker had simply disappeared through the walls. There had been no disruption in the video surveillance, no alarms sounding, no disturbance - except for Harley's unconscious body, found on the floor of an unguarded interrogation room. "You're lucky that the only person who can offer you any insight on the matter wasn't killed."

"Ah... yes," chimed in another board member, who was amazingly even skinnier than Dr. Arkham. He had a squeaky, high-pitched voice and wore a labcoat which left Bruce under the impression that he was indeed a doctor, "how is Dr. Quinzel faring? We've heard the Joker left her with a rather nasty bump on the head."

_Bump on the head?_ Bruce asked himself. _He'd_ heard that she'd been left with far more than a bump on the head – a mild concussion, a cut above her left eye, and a small fracture in her cheekbone. Reports had said that although she told police she didn't remember much about the injury, she seemed to acknowledge that he had slammed her head viciously into the table.

"She's about as well as can be expected," Arkham started, almost nonchalantly as he gave the group of about fifteen or so men the play-by-play. "We don't know exactly how long she was there – at least an hour and a half, we suspect. She told us she remembered going into the session at around 6:00 in the evening, and we found her at about 8:00. Which means that the Joker probably had more than an hour's lead on us when the police were finally dispatched."

Arkham's face was marred by a very apparent lack of sleep. Though he wasn't exactly aging gracefully, the usually taut skin on his cheekbones sagged with exhaustion, and the devilish glimmer in his beady black eyes had been dimmed significantly by the trials of the day. His face was a steely gray, and clearly short on patience, as it stabbed at Bruce when he spoke.

"But Dr. Quinzel is alright?" Bruce asked finally, the digits of one hand spread as his palm shifted in Arkham's direction.

With a short and unpleasant smile, Arkham drummed his fingers upon the table, glancing over those silver-dollar glasses of his. "Mr. Wayne, I don't think I need to remind you that the people surrounding this table have our _patient _as their first priority," he remarked in the patronizing tone that Bruce's mind reserved for the snobbery of the super-elite - sadly a tone that he was all too used to. "But, yes..." Arkham went on with a forced pleasant tone, "she is slightly injured, but was coherent when she woke up, and has since been able to aid us in the investigation to find the Joker." Shifting his weight anxiously, Arkham's eyes shifted casually from Bruce to the other doctors that sat, their unenthusiastic mugs barely listening in on such a crucial conversation. "It's a miracle he didn't kill her, really."

Just as the old doctor took a breath to move on to another topic, Bruce swept in with another question. "Well, I'm not a therapist," he began, crossing one leg over the other while glimpsing at the two overstuffed leather chairs on either side of him – the only two empty chairs at the table - "but you'd think that if the Joker really wanted to kill Harley in an attempt to escape, then he probably wouldn't have had a problem doing that."

An exasperated sigh escaped Arkham as he turned to address this remedial thought that the young man had so rudely interrupted him with. With another of his dramatic shrugs, he admitted, "You're exactly right, Mr. Wayne. Certainly he wouldn't have a problem doing that."

"But he didn't."

To Arkham it was a painfully obvious thing to say, but there were other doctors around the table who shifted back and forth, uneasy about the sudden point. "Alright, I'll bite..." Arkham told him, extending his hand down toward the other end of the table, where Bruce sat off to the right, "what are you getting at, Mr. Wayne?"

"It doesn't make any sense to me that a murderer would have any sort of moral obligation to keep Dr. Quinzel alive. He had to have known it was a poor decision on his part." And Bruce was sure it had been. The thing that kept the Joker alive was very much the same thing that kept Batman alive – the mystery. The Joker was a complete enigma, and therefore it was easier for him to maintain the ruse. With or without the makeup, he was still the Joker. But six months was a long time, and it was difficult for Bruce to believe that he had managed to keep himself a complete and total secret from anyone over that length . Especially from a girl like Harley, who seemed to have a surreal gift for hitting all the right buttons.

"A poor decision?" Arkham asked him, obviously confused.

For a doctor, it amused Bruce how Arkham couldn't seem to grip the lack of moral constructs the Joker was exhibiting. To Arkham, it must have seemed a bad decision to take anyone's life, but to the Joker taking a life was all part of the job. But sparing Harley had confused even him. "If the Joker was going to make a clean break, then killing Harley would have been the next step for him."

"Mr. Wayne!" Arkham started, and Bruce noticed his feigned disgust sent a wave of clucking tongues around the the table.

"Think about it, Arkham. The man has spent more time with her than he's likely to have spent with anyone else in years. Why would he have spared her, knowing that if anyone could lead us right back to him, it would have been Harleen?" It didn't make any sense. The only person who would be able to aid the police to his capture, and he had let her live. Although assuming the Joker would ever act _logically _was probably a mistake, it was a massive loophole in his escape plan, though Harley probably had no idea as to where he had gone.

By now a few of the members of the board were looking down the long boardroom table to where Jeremiah Arkham sat, peering furiously over at the young man who had cornered him in this small debate. After a moment, though, he simply shook his head. "I'm not entirely sure..."

A deafening silence consumed the room, and within it a staring contest developed between Bruce and Dr. Arkham. The two men stared back at one another with disdain that moved like lightning strikes from one side of the room to the other. Before long, Arkham's demeanor changed once again, adopting the light-hearted and casual tone he used to mask the way he felt about being questioned.

"Perhaps," he began again, those bushy gray brows of his lifted high upon his head, "if you're so focused on the _plight _of Dr. Quinzel, you two should develop a board of directors that deals primarily with her inadequacies as a therapist, and stop wasting my time playing the bleeding heart on this board. Unless, that is, like the rest of us, you would rather stay focused on the real motivator here, which should be protecting your investment in this facility."

The thing that struck Bruce as most odd afterward was the fact that no one else at the table so much as blinked at Arkham's presumption of Harley's failures, which Bruce then realized only existed to cover up his own. When he'd spent time with Harley all those months ago, he had admitted to his frustration over Arkham's decision. How he could have let such an ambitious yet inexperienced therapist take such a big case for the sake of publicity was beyond him. And these jaded, withered old fools were blind to what Bruce was able to see so clearly now. Arkham had to have expected, even back then, that the Joker would attempt to escape.

And whenever he did, there would be only one person to turn around and blame.

Harley had been Arkham's perfect little scapegoat from the beginning.

"Well..." Bruce placed both palms down on the polished oak table, pushing himself away from the edge and rising to his feet. Reaching over and taking hold of his briefcase, he inspected the lock for a moment before placing a coy smile on his face. "I'll tell you what, Arkham. I'd rather sit on a board where we sort out Harley's inadequacies than sit on one where we sort out yours."

Arkham sat a long moment, taken aback by the comment. As Bruce walked behind the chairs of the other trustees, the old man stood up to address his abrupt departure. "Bruce, a Wayne has sat on this board since this facility opened."

"Well, I apologize for not being a stickler for tradition," Bruce quipped rather casually, and watched as Arkham's distress deepened. The Wayne Enterprises representation lent very deep pockets to Arkham's foundations, and to have one of his largest investors walk out over insulting a girl must have been enough to knock the old doctor right off his rocker - which as far as Bruce was concerned was where he belonged, instead of sitting at the head of a board table.

"Do have fun cleaning up Arkham's mess, gentlemen," Bruce called out calmly, before running his hand down the three buttons of his suit jacket, turning the large brass handle of the massive oak door, and making a swift exit.

# # # # # # # #

The hollow ticking of the plastic-covered wall clock did more to amplify the silence than break it. Over the months, silence had become a four-letter-word to Harley, who had spent her time wading in the holy waters of unconscionable noise. She loved it, and now, sitting alone in her office without so much as a radio to soothe her, she missed the chaos more than ever. Admittedly, Harley was the kind of girl who would fall asleep to the television every night if she had one in her bedroom. Maybe that was why she constantly found herself sleeping on the couch in the family room.

But over the last couple days, as the silence had continued, she'd begun to ask herself what it was she truly missed. Was it the commotion, or the creator of that commotion?

It was getting harder and harder to tell.

Before she knew it, the question had caused her to zone out, looking off through the distance of the blank beige wall that stood in front of her. The bit of comfort that she found in her meditative state was short-lived - she was abruptly awakened by the sound of a knock at the door. It was sudden, and sharp, and it caused her to jump slightly in her seat.

Shaking off the heavy blanket of relaxation that had shrouded her for those few minutes, her expression stiffened and she turned her attention back down to the paperwork in front of her, in an effort to look busy to whoever would shortly be entering. "Come in," she said casually, half-expecting yet another investigator to be standing on the other side of the door with yet another slew of questions.

Instead, when she looked up from her work, her eyes found a stunning pair of polished leather shoes, followed by a well-tailored gray suit, topped with the handsome and yet dreadfully concerned face of Bruce Wayne. Without a doubt he had come to meet with the board of directors for Arkham Asylum. He stood in his usual dignified way, which still possessed a kind of softness to it. He was the only man she knew who could maintain his elite roots without a pretentious bone in his body.

He was the last person she wanted to see her now.

Her eyes made contact with his only for a moment before she turned her face to look back down to the paperwork before her, doing her best to conceal her injuries from his view. What had started off as a small cut had turned into a very distinguishable black eye, which threatened to get worse before it got better. It wouldn't have looked so bad if she'd been able to get home and apply a thick layer of makeup to conceal it. In between paper work and interrogations, though, she simply hadn't had the time to sleep, let alone indulge her recently developed vanity.

"Good evening, Mr. Wayne..." she said with unenthusiastic formality.

The hesitation in his voice before he spoke told her he hadn't been expecting that kind of tone. Thumbing over his shoulder at the door of her office as he took a few steps in, he asked, "Is this not a good time? I was here for a board meeting, and I wanted to drop by, see if you were alright."

In response to the drama of the last couple days, Harley had pulled up her shields, treating everyone as a potential enemy. It was hard to do that with Bruce, since - much like herself in a way - when he asked a question, you genuinely got the sense that he cared enough to actually hear the answer.

Suddenly bashful, she glanced up at him, the left side of her face still turned away. "My father used to say that the worst of times are often the best of times to hear from a friend," she said flatly, then gestured to one of the metal folding chairs in front of the desk of her cluttered office. "Have a seat," she instructed him, still trying to focus on the paper work before her.

Slowly, he made his way over to the chair, placing his briefcase down beside it. He appeared to want to ignore her condition, though it was an impossibility for him. After all, it was what he had come to see...but instead of reacting in disgust like she expected him to, those well-manicured eyebrows of his furrowed toward the center of his face in concern. Harley watched as he took in a deep breath and exhaled into a large sigh, shaking his head. "Oh Harley, I'm so sorry..."

The hand she had been using to scrawl notes onto the page stopped writing, and she turned up to meet his gaze, and watched as he sucked air in through his teeth at the extent of her injuries. They really weren't that severe...had no one known exactly what had happened, Harley might have been able to pass it off as some sort of accident... which was sadly not the case.

Trying her best to smile at him, she nodded her agreement. "Yeah... I'm sorry too." Though for what, she didn't quite know.

He let a few gentle seconds pass, bringing his gaze away from her injury and to the rest of her face. Painting on a smile of his own, he attempted to change the topic. "Hey, but look on the bright side. You don't have to spend time in this dump anymore. Why bother dealing with Arkham's mess when you can resign now, and come work for me at Wayne Enterprises? You know, the medical division is focusing more and more on psychiatric treatments...we could use someone like you," he told her, his brows lifted in persuasive optimism. Though she would not consider Bruce Wayne an optimist, it was nice to see that he was trying so hard to make the best out of a bad situation.

"That's certainly very kind of you Bruce, but..." she started, but he cut her off.

"No, Harley, come on. You and I both know what kind of man runs this place. C'mon! I could pay you twice as much as that clown does," he said, trying his best to persuade her, but the way he looked at her now told her he had already guessed. Anyone who knew her well enough knew that she didn't just hold onto things out of stubbornness. Harley wasn't stubborn. She was tied to things on a deeper level than just pride.

She smiled at him, reaching over to the edge of her desk to pat the back of his hand as he tried so hard to coax her toward a better life. "Bruce... why do you think I'm here?" she asked him finally. Bruce looked back at her as if expecting that no matter what he said, the answer would probably be wrong. Her smile stretched a little wider. "Recognition? Appreciation? Fame? It can't be fortune... I pay my bills on credit cards."

"You wouldn't have to if you worked for me," he interjected, and Harley closed her eyes as he spoke, as if to block out what he said before continuing.

"No... I don't care about all of that." Shaking her head, she lifted her hand up to him and decided to turn the conversation onto him, in order to offer a bit of perspective. "When you were young... what did you want to be when you grew up, Bruce? What was the one thing you saw yourself doing with your life?" she asked him, with that quiet passion in her voice that had the unique ability to gain someone's undivided attention.

Bruce took a moment to contemplate his answer. There was a soft, calm expression that washed over his face, and he smiled. "When I was a kid? I wanted to be a doctor, like..."

"Like your father... I remember," she finished for him, with a soft smile of her own. It had been nearly a decade, but Harley had had this conversation with him before. Never one to divulge much information about herself, back then, she would begin conversations with questions to turn the conversation around to the other person. Once, when Bruce had asked about her family, she'd given him a vague description of her home life before asking him about his. They sat in the parking lot of an A&W for an hour and a half as Bruce went on and on about his parents, who they were, how they had died...every detail, as if he had been dying to tell someone, anyone who would listen - and _really _listen - to him.

He'd apologized after he was finished, but Harley had only remarked that it was one of the best nights of her life. Though... they'd hardly spoken to each other after that. Maybe that's why they got on so well...there were no strange reintroductions, no awkward pauses. She knew all the important things, and that would never change. The only thing Bruce had really known about her up to this point was that she was a good listener, but in order to make herself clear to him, she was going to have to admit to a bit more than that.

He shook his head at her in disbelief after she spoke. "How do you remember that?" he asked, dumbfounded. "We must have had that conversation ten years ago."

Harley coy smile didn't fade in the slightest. "If someone cared enough to sit down and share their life story with you, you'd listen to it. People should consider themselves lucky to have the chance to sit down and listen to people. You'd be surprised at what you pick up..."

The surprise melted off his face once she had explained herself, and he nodded his understanding. "That's why you're here..."

Nodding back, she glanced down at the paperwork again, but only enough to push it to the side. "I'm fucked up, Bruce... and not like this..." She paused and pointed at her eye. "I mean like... _fucked_ up. No one knows anything about me. I should probably be the one in therapy, but instead, I became the therapist. I come in here, and I talk to these people, and some of them..." Scoffing, she waved her hand to dismiss the very thought of them. "They're so far gone they don't know who they _are_, let alone the fact that there's something wrong with them, or that they've done terrible things. They lack intelligence, they lack awareness... they're just gone."

Bruce was watching her intently, something that might have been appreciation overtaking his expression. Surely, for someone who doesn't talk about themselves to finally speak, one should consider themselves graced by the presence of mere conversation.

"But..." she continued, "when I started talking to the Joker, I lost track of who was actually in therapy - him or me."

The thought must have upset him because his eyes furrowed. "Harley, you can't..." he began to say, but was interrupted once again by her soft-spoken attempt to get her point across.

"Now, I you know you hate him. I _know _you do, because of his complete disregard for life - which to him is worth far less then you're father's gold watch, or your mother's pearl necklace," she explained to him, placing both her hands over his, which now hung limply on the edge of her desk. "And... I know you hate him because of Rachel..."

"Harley..." he whispered her name breathlessly, trying to stop her from continuing.

"But in your life Bruce, you were surrounded by men who were clearly and plainly good. For some, you must realize, it's not so easy. For me... you can't understand how confusing it is to watch the world condemn someone you love, when you only know them as this kind, protective force. To watch as everyone hates them, when you can't help but love them."

An appalled expression flashed on Bruce's face, and he ripped his hand out from under both of hers, recoiling in horror and disgust over what she had just said. "Harley, what are you talking about?" he asked sharply. "The _Joker_?"

"The Joker?" she asked, eyes widening before she began laughing at his little gaffe. "No... Bruce, no." Pausing, her smile faded into its minimal, coy impression as she shook her head to dismiss his thought. "No, my father."

Bruce wouldn't be able to recall her father, because Bruce had never heard about him. Truthfully, he'd been in prison for nearly four years before Harley had gone off to university, and she hadn't really told anybody besides the Joker about his existence. Come to think of it, the only other person who might have been familiar with her father's circumstances was James Gordon.

Bruce's disgusted look transformed into curiosity as she continued. "You see... your father gave life, and mine took it away...but I can't stop loving him. Eventually, my father will die for the crimes he's committed, but some men, good or bad, die for their actions. The good ones die heroes, like your father did, like Harvey Dent did... and I can't tell you how sorry I am about that. But I refuse to lump those 'bad' men in with the results of their circumstances. I know that no matter how evil a man might seem... there is some good underneath."

There was nothing left for Bruce to express, other than shock. If anyone ever wanted to shut him up, they'd usually only need to mention his father...but instead, Harley had tried hard to use him to provide Bruce some perspective, and when his gentle smile finally found its way back across his face, she knew she had done just that.

"I think I understand..." he whispered as he rose from the chair, in a tone that was more hoarse - gruffer than his regular speaking voice. Enough that Harley thought he must have been holding back a flood of emotion, although when he looked over to her again he appeared calm and composed.

Her mind flipped through its Rolodex, asking herself why his tone just then had seemed so familiar, but she fluffed it off. "I'm glad, and I appreciate your offer. But I'm going to see this thing through to the very end," she said, and then rolled her eyes before pointing to the slightly darker injured one. "The bitter end, so to speak."

Holding his briefcase in one hand, the other resting upon the handle of her office door, Bruce smiled and looked back to her. "The bitter end..." he repeated, and nodded back his adieu.

**NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR**: And here we go! Its that time again, and I know all of you are super excited. I have been writing like a mad man over the last month in order to get everything ready for next week. If you're new to the game, and you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm of course talking about...

!BLITZ WEEK! 2.0

The second Blitz Week will begin on Monday, September 27th, and will conclude with the dramatic finale of Tragedy Deferred - Part One on Friday, October 1st. Which means you can expect a new chapter every single day next week.

I'm so excited, and I know some of you are too, so if you're reading this, save the date. Chapter 30 will be posted Monday morning at 7:30AM and it's a DOOZY! Mentally prepare yourself, because next week is an intense line-up of five chapters, starting with an 8000 word mega-chapter that I think a couple of my reviewers saw coming ^_~!

In the last few weeks, My readership has exploded, and I'm even nearing the 200 review milestone. Thank you so much for reading, you guys. I can't even begin to tell you how much I appreciate it. I try to get back to everyone who reviews, so please leave me one. I love getting them.

Thanks again and we'll see you next week!


	30. Chapter 30: Inside

**Note from the Author**: _Okay guys, here it is, for your consideration - Chapter 30. I really hope this gives you a taste of what's to come this week. Get ready for a while ride._

It was late. Really late.

Gotham City was not the city that never slept. If anything, it was too quiet, and whispered with the groan of distant transport trucks and shipping containers clattering over rails. Their rhythm set the heartbeat for the dark city night. Most everyone lay safely tucked away in their beds, more for their own protection than out of any need for rest.

Gotham's night life belonged to the truly daring. Patronage at night clubs had recently consisted of wannabe gangsters trying to rub elbows with the guys who owned the mob scene. But since the death of Harvey Dent, the crowds had thinned, and those who gambled with Saturday night adventures usually found themselves disappointed.

But the Joker was in the wrong part of town for all that.

He skulked down alleyways and avenues behind the skyscrapers that lined the fashionable upscale district near City Hall. The neighborhood belonged to trendy yuppie couples with their six-figure salaries, and those she-she little mongrels that pranced around them on bedazzled leashes. They drank their expensive coffee, wore cookie-cutter designer clothes... and although he knew Harley lived here, he really couldn't understand why.

You think you _know_ somebody...

This section of the city was relatively quiet at night, and though the odd car still drove by, the Joker felt confident enough to stroll across streets and into small unnamed alleyways, and still avoid detection. The night air felt cool and refreshing, and the skyscrapers produced a kind of wind-tunnel effect that funneled a gentle breeze into something powerful enough to lick at the hem of his long, violet suede coat. Winter might have been just wrapping up, but this was his favorite time of year – when it was still just cool enough to require a couple of layers.

Prying his way into the side entrance of the apartment building had been a snap. Slitting the throat of the elderly security guard who had one of his monitors tuned into a taped copy of _The Price is Right_ had been an outright piece of cake. Rolling his eyes as the old man fell into a slump in his swivel chair, the Joker tapped on his shoulder until he collapsed into a heap on the floor and nudged him with his foot under the large desk. With a gloved hand, he switched off all the security cameras before he sauntered toward the elevators, whistling a tune and checking the bottoms of his feet to make sure he wasn't tracking any blood.

The trip to the thirty-seventh floor was relatively short, which was a blessing, since the poorly coordinated muzak in that elevator was an assault on his eardrums - so much so that he nearly tumbled out when the doors finally slid open.

He looked around. The hallway was empty and dimly lit, and looked like something out of the brochure from a four-star hotel. There were fresh flowers arranged in a vase which sat upon a tall, narrow table in front of the elevators. He watched them for a moment, the brushed nickel elevator doors sealing themselves shut behind him. Scoffing at the colorful display, he snatched a wilting orange lily from the vase and shook the excess water from the end of it, blowing on the petals. It had been a while since the Joker had found himself in such a domestic setting. He was having a hard time remembering a place like this from anywhere other than hotel brochures and crappy television dramas.

The place seemed so uncomfortable to him, and it just pronounced his curiosity about the girl. How could she live in a place like this?

He casually counted his way past suite doors and watched the numbers go up, two by two. until he came to the door he'd been looking for. 3711 – Harley's apartment. She hadn't been difficult to find; a simple call into information was enough to provide him with her home phone number, and a reverse search after that had provided him with her address. She kept herself listed. Probably one of those do-gooder qualities of hers. Even her business card had her cellphone number on it - always accessible.

As he stood at the door, he dug into his jacket pocket for a moment, and pulled out a torsion wrench and a long, shiny lockpick. Almost gracefully pushing the length of his jacket aside, he went to one knee and carefully inserted the two instruments, gently fiddling with the mechanisms inside. He narrowed his eyes as he peered into the darkness within the tiny keyhole, reflecting for a moment on how much he could have used Harley's glasses just then.

There came a _click_, and the Joker turned the torsion wrench slowly, sliding the deadbolt open. He pulled a pocket-watch from the inside pocket of his vest and glanced at the time. Nearly three in the morning. There was no way she could have been awake...and due to his escape, there was only a very slim chance she was even here.

With a very careful hand he pushed open the door just an inch, only to find himself further exasperated by the gentle jingling of a simple chain lock - his final obstacle. To a rookie it might have been a showstopper. What a defeat it would be to have such a small chain destroy a wonderful evening...and so the Joker paid it no mind. Instead, he reached into his pocket again and pulled out an elastic band. He opened the door just enough to loop the band around the chain, before extending it down to wrap around the lever-style door handle on the side of the door where he sorely wished to be.

Closing the door, he listened as the elastic band contracted, pulling the chain along with it. Smiling, he listened to its clinking for a moment longer before pushing the door open.

He would have been lying if he said he wasn't caught off guard. It was a very well-maintained apartment. A decent view of the Finger River hung to the left, more skyscrapers and buildings to the right. Floor to ceiling windows facilitated the view, but also lit the space far more than his liking.

_At least she saves on electricity_, he thought to himself as he took a couple steps inside. The front door opened from the small lobby toward the kitchen area, where he spotted her car keys on the counter top. He didn't touch them, but did flash a look of disgust at the blue and white BMW symbol that was embossed into a carved graphite key. Her refrigerator was the type that one would see in the kitchen of an upscale restaurant - the door housed a pane of frosted glass, and even closed, a soft light cascaded from it. Opening it, the contents were another surprise: mineral water, a few bottles of white wine, a pitcher of iced tea, a pitcher of lemonade with slices bouncing around inside, a glass bottle of organic mil, and a seemingly endless supply of bottled water.

He felt _lied_ to. Although he hadn't been sure what to expect, the thought of soda cans and half-consumed Chinese take-out had somehow come to his mind. Harley had confessed on more than one occasion that she wasn't very domestic.

And then he saw them.

Sitting there, their glass covering reflecting the synthetic light from the urban environment outside, was a tiered cake tray, underneath which were three layers of bright, frosted cupcakes.

Like a dagger to his heart.

He was beginning to see it all now. The obsessively cleaned apartment, every nook and cranny vacuumed, swept and scrubbed...even those baseboards, with an odd, chemical gleam to them. Her white furniture didn't house a single stain, and there wasn't a single dust-bunny moving like a wayward tumbleweed across the dark hardwood floor.

He took out the jug of milk and placed it on the counter, before turning back to gently lift the glass dome which housed the cupcakes. Snatching one, he made his way over to the sofa, cupcake in one hand and milk in the other, and sank down into the softness of the overstuffed fabric.

He groaned quietly. This was not the girl he imagined, the one he had come to know. Harley had _gusto_. Panache, even! She wore painful shoes because she liked the way they made her calves look. She was flirtatious, she was fun. She made him laugh.

You can tell a lot about someone by the kind of home they keep, and for such a unique person... she looked like you could have ripped her straight from the catalog of a Swedish furniture store.

He took a bite of the cupcake, pulling back to stare at it in mild amusement. "Damn..." he muttered to himself as a surprising blast of sweet pleasure surged through his mouth, a dollop of buttercream icing dotting his upper lip.

He rose from the couch with a large gulp of milk, and took it with him as he placed the half eaten cupcake down on the countertop. Meandering through the rest of her apartment, he made his way down a hallway and found an office, which was much more crowded than the rest of the place. Most of it was cluttered with things that would give the place more personality if she had only taken the time to place them. Old black and white photographs of what he assumed was family lay around - in one of them, a gruff-looking man with a mustache held what must have been a very young Harley up with both arms, a medal looped around her neck with a decorative ribbon.

The Joker plopped down in a chair, flipping through one of the many photo albums that had been placed in a stack in the corner of the room. Pictures of Christmas gatherings, family outings, various gymnastic meets. He had a hard time stifling laughter as he went through pictures of Harley in her awkward teens, and pondering over these college pictures of her with straight, platinum blond hair. Finally, he came to the last page, a photograph sliding out from behind its sun-bleached pages. The picture was Harley, maybe no more than fifteen. It was a close-up, smoky and blurred out around the edges, as if taken in a dreamscape. Something about it called out to him. Her eyes were open, peering at a young boy with blond hair, maybe five years younger than her. He leaned his head on her shoulder, eyes closed. The blue in her eyes had faded with her age, but the same bright red smirk played on her lips.

_That_ was the girl he knew.

He stuffed the picture into his inside jacket pocket before shuffling out of the office and across the hall into the bathroom. Flicking on the light, he looked at himself in the mirror over the sink. His makeup had settled on his face nicely; he appreciated it much more once it had been on for several hours. He looked very much like the man who had gone into Arkham all those months ago. They didn't allow mirrors on the inside, since they have such a high potential to disconnect psychotics from reality, or so Harley had told him.

But he wasn't standing here to become consumed with his own reflection. His eyes swept over the swarm of small cosmetic bottles around her sink. You name it: anti-aging day cream, night cream, eye cream, exfoliators, clay face masks, lightening cream... it was all there. Her own private army in the war to age gracefully. All of it disappointed him as he went through it, until he found her stash of makeup. Shadows in matte shades: gray, white, black, eye liner pencil... Joker was a fan of grease paint himself, but he knew women swore by this dainty shit.

The lipstick, though...that was something he could get behind.

He popped the lid and peered into the stick, watching happily as the red color emerged. He looked at himself in the mirror, layering the shade over his own grease paint. No color he had in his own arsenal was quite this vibrant.

Pulling the pigment across his scar, he bobbed his head up and down as he debated the product, playfully fluttering his dusted white eyelashes. "I feel pretty!" he sang to his reflection in the mirror.

Then he heard it. A tired little groan that echoed through the hall, along with the sound of a body stretching out on a spring mattress. He switched off the light in the bathroom immediately, and peered out the door into the hallway that led from the bathroom to the bedroom he hadn't noticed before.

In the wan light that flooded in from the massive window behind the headboard, he watched the silhouette of her body curve and arch under a thin blanket, her arms reaching up over her head before falling limp against down-filled pillows.

He really had not expected her to be here. _You'd think 'hey Harl, psychopath on the loose who knows your name, might want to stay with a friend' but noooooo..._

He watched her form settle from his interruption and back into sleep. Now that he thought about it, _why _he had actually come hadn't struck him until just that moment. What had he been expecting? That he was just going to break in, poke around her place, eat a cupcake, test her lipstick, and leave? That didn't sound like him at all.

And now that he knew how astoundingly cookie-cutter her real life was, the least he could do was tell her about it.

As he sauntered silently across the room, he stepped alongside her bed, where she rested comfortably. He slipped his switchblade from his pocket and pushed the small button trigger. The sound of the blade jetting out of its sheath was enough to stir her from sleep, which he quickly responded to by sliding the metal blade flat against her molars.

Her eyes were wide as saucers when they saw his cruel clown face, but he seemed to be strangely, genuinely happy as he whispered:

"Wanna know how I got these scars?"

He heard a very ominous _click, _and then the unmistakable feeling of a cold steel barrel pressed firmly against his left temple, and she mumbled back:

"Wanna know how I paint my walls with your brain?"

And though just a moment ago he would have thought was nothing she could have done to redeem herself for the hipster lifestyle and the expensive apartment and the hippie organic milk in her fridge, suddenly she managed to surprise him again.

_God_, how he loved his woman.

Raising his brows, his eyes swiveled over to his left, trying in vain to see the silvery gleam of the gun in the neon light. "Touché," he said, before his eyes lazily moved back down to her once again. The concept of having a very deadly weapon placed at such close proximity to his squishy innards was not new to him – in fact, it was...pretty familiar, which might have been the reason that he showed absolutely no fear.

She was angry – that much he could tell. But he'd seen her angry before, and the look on her face told him there was something more than the anger. It was past it, beyond it, it was very close to the verge of tears, and yet also very close to the gnashing of venomous teeth. So much was being held back, so much that the only action that seemed to make any sense to her was pressing the barrel of a loaded gun to his head.

It was perfect. As much as he loved an edged weapon, there was something about the smell of gun powder and grease that suited her like a French perfume. The Joker loved it almost as much as he loved the smell of gasoline.

Once he decided enough silence had passed, he shot his eyes back toward the gun, gesturing to it. "You're not going to shoot me, are you?" Maybe it was a cocky question to ask. She could have pulled the trigger right then and there and rid herself of him... but she didn't want that. He could see it in her wracked expression.

Her eyebrows furrowed deeply, her bottom lids carved out deep like cups to catch the moisture collecting there. "And you're got going to cut my mouth open," came her muffled reply, that sounded more like a statement than a question. She knew him better than he knew her. Oh, but the Joker did love these little games. And had Harley been in a better mood, he might have egged her into growing a pair and taking a shot at him, but the look in her face was a clear indicator that maybe now wasn't the best time.

"How do you know that?" he asked. He was sure a lot of people would agree that trying to predict his behavior usually ended up being a pretty piss-poor decision, but he'd never been one to underestimate this girl...especially now that she had a gun to his head. Harley had made a lot of dangerous assumptions in the past, and it almost always ended up favorably for her. It was like playing a game of chess with someone of equal skill level: challenging, and constantly mutating into a completely different game.

"Well..." she started, opening her jaw enough to move her mouth off the knife without injuring the delicate flesh inside her cheek, freeing herself to talk properly. He watched her with a soft amusement in his face as she did. "If you were actually going to slice my face in half...you probably wouldn't want to start by holding a dull blade flat against my teeth like that. You'd want to hold it against the inside of my cheek, wouldn't you?"

A chuckle escaped his throat as he pulled the knife away from her and lowered the blade. When he moved to sit up, however, he was met with another moment of surprise when he had the distinct feeling of being tethered into position. Glancing down, he noticed that she had a firm grasp of his dark, patterned tie – the barrel of the gun still pressed against his head.

"Still mad, huh?" His lips opened into a large, toothy, fake grin. "How are ya, Doll?" he asked her in a lighthearted tone, though something in his chest seemed to shift when he looked down at her. There she was, laying in bed, and the shadows of her headboard had shrouded most of her face, but the silk of her nightgown allowed her to slide up into a seated position, bringing him face to face with the fading blue and yellow bruises that spread around her bejeweled irises. Although there was no repentance, no regret, or remorse... there _was_ acknowledgment, when six months ago there would have been none.

He had done that to her.

He hadn't wanted to, but he had.

"In shambles..." she whispered in reply. "Why, how are you?"

He had to be honest, it wouldn't have been as interesting otherwise. "I've been better," he muttered dejectedly, before casually glancing over to the gun she held at his head. "So you gonna shoot me, or you just gonna think about it all night?"

A relieved look passed over his face when she pulled the gun away, slowly releasing the hammer and turning the safety on. "Shambles" had been a good way to describe herself, because she very much looked like a wreck. Her blackened eye complemented her sourpuss expression. There was a sadness there, and though he couldn't put his finger on exactly what was missing, she didn't look at him with the same sparkle in her eyes that she'd had all of three nights ago. Maybe for the first time since he'd known her, he was seeing her after she'd been pushed over the edge.

The Joker knew he had gone too far. Had he really needed to knock her out in order to escape? Probably not...but how could he have faced her after that? He'd never felt that human before... and quickly sealed the hole in his hardened exterior where she had teared into his emotion.

But it might as well have been with duct tape. A very temporary fix.

He had to see her.

When she sat up in bed, still limply holding on to her gun, suddenly he wasn't paying much attention to her face anymore. With her arms crossed and resting across her stomach, it was hard to see anything but thin silk straps and a deep sweetheart neckline, hemmed in French lace. She looked more like a pin-up girl from a Bond movie than the doctor he knew. The metallic lilac silk shimmered like silver in the window's light, matching the metal of the gun to just within a few shades. She resembled a bronze sculpture, polished to a lustrous perfection.

"Why did you come?" she asked, and he was almost thankful she'd said something to break the silence. "Other than the obvious?"

He raised his eyebrows, surprised. He wasn't under the impression that he had given anything away. "Well, what's the obvious?"

"To try to scare the crap out of me by showing up in my apartment in the middle of the night. Otherwise you think you would have at least knocked." She had a point, but it didn't really matter. For the umpteenth time since she had sat up a mere few seconds ago, the Joker's eyes were crawling down her neck once again, and for the first time in...well, ever, he tried to focus on the conversation. "How did you get in here, anyway?"

"I used an elastic band!" he exclaimed excitedly, rising and pointing toward the door. "Wanna see?" he asked, waving her over in his direction.

Sighing, she watched him leave the bedroom before she rubbed her eyes, believing maybe - just _maybe _she was having a bad dream. She leaned to her side, plucking a darkly-colored silken robe from the post of her headboard. Swinging her heavy, sleepily stiff legs over the side of the bed, she dramatically swept it around her, sliding her arms into it as she slowly followed him. She came to a stop beside the small table in her lobby, and watched as he demonstrated how the elastic band worked by dragging the chain to-and-fro along the lock.

"See?" he chimed. "You close the door and the chain slides along and pops right out! Learned how to do that when I was twenty. Used to rob... hotel... rooms..." He trailed off when he glanced back from the lock and over to her.

Flannel pajamas were lost on today's women.

The same smug expression, and the same frosted purple night gown, except now it had been layered with a dark plum kimono, the sleeves of which hung down at length midway down her calves - which were strikingly bare. He gulped, but couldn't resist looking her up and down a few times.

"I'll have to remember that when I need to rob a hotel room," she groaned, clearly unimpressed. Tapping her foot, she seemed to be waiting for him to say something more, and when he only looked back at her, she broke eye contact altogether and moved to turn into her kitchen, reaching for the door handle of her refrigerator.

Apologies began flooding into his brain from all directions, but he swatted them away like pesky flies. Despite how logical it might have been, the Joker did not make a point to rely on logic, particularly when it didn't sound like something he'd say.

He never apologized. Ever.

Nevertheless, his mouth stretched out into a guilty smile. As she popped the top of a big green bottle of mineral water, he took a few steps away from the door, into her line of sight. "Did I do that?" he asked, using the iconic phrase of social ineptitude, gesturing toward her bruised eye.

Though he didn't entirely understand why, there was this incessant need for her attention. Had it been anyone else, he might have just stuck them with a rusty knife before leaving – but something about the way she seemed genuinely unimpressed with him seemed to pull at him, like strings on a marionette.

It was exactly the question she needed to open the floodgates. "What the _fuck _were you thinking?" she asked, in a tone that would have reminded him of his mother if he had been able to reflect upon her clearly. Her face had sharpened from its usual smooth contours into a fierce and jagged glare.

He would have immediately moved onto the offensive, if he hadn't been so caught off guard. "Uh..." croaked his only reply, before she hijacked the conversation once and for all.

"You've ruined everything! _Everything _I worked for!" She set the bottle down with a heavy _thud _on the countertop, gripping two handfuls of her dark hair. "Not to mention I could have had a seizure, or a hemorrhage, or something just as serious!" she exclaimed, beginning to waltz and pace around the small lobby, gesturing toward him wildly with her hands as she spoke.

The Joker rolled his eyes and offered up a dramatic shrug. "Who knows _why _I do anything at all?" The idea that he could have been in control of such actions went against everything that Harley had tried convincing herself of over the past several months. Granted, even the Joker knew that it was a weak argument to stand on. "Besides...could I have killed you? _Of _course I could! But I've knocked out way more people than I've killed," he pointed out.

"Oh, well, _that's_ a comforting thought..." The coolness in her tone was artfully sarcastic, but it made him far more defensive then he had expected it to.

He extended his hands toward her and shook them. "Why are you worrying about something that didn't even _happen_?" he asked her, and just as he was beginning to believe that he had won the screaming match with his distinctly masculine logic, she exploded.

"Because I woke up, _bleeding, _mind you," she started, pointing with a defiant finger at the suture on her forehead, her tone high pitched and as close to yelling as he had ever heard her, "feeling about three inches tall, and it wasn't my fault, Joker – oohh no!" She pointed an accusatory, stiffened finger at him, jabbing it into his chest. "It was all _your_ fault!"

He feigned a pout and rubbed himself where she had just jabbed him. "Oww..."

"The funny thing is," the tirade continued, "you had spent the last six months – _six months!_ – trying to convince me that I was worth _something_, trying to get me to see the way you said _you_ saw me. And you were so full of shit, that whole time!" And right here her face fell from fuming mad to heartbroken, in such a short time that the Joker was beginning to wonder what exactly she was feeling. "You really might have had me, until you felt the need to bash my head up against the table, because you honestly had me going."

And now a smile spread across her lips, menacing, and impressive. All he could do was stand and wait for what emotion might come next.

"But you did what everyone, and I mean _everyone_, told me that you would do. You used all those niceties you had earned with me and you cashed them in for a chance at your freedom." Her face twisted in disgust, and internally he was devastated, trying in vain to interrupt.

"No, no, no... that's _not _why I did that."

Coming full circle, the rage came over the two of them like a wave, and within seconds she was boiling over him once more. "You made me trust you, and then you manipulated me! You built me up, and then you left me in ruin! I abandoned my ethics for you! I _saved_ your life!"

"Harley..." he said slowly, quietly, but very clearly, in an effort to capture her attention. "Listen to me."

"No..." She shook her head. "No, no... not anymore. In fact, you've got to get the hell out." She took him by the shoulders and gently encouraged him to take a couple steps toward the front door that he had just meticulously unlocked.

Though he turned to face the door, he didn't budge as she tried to nudge him forward. "What are you doing?"

"Kicking you out."

"Well, you're not doing a very good job of..."

And before he could finish his snide comment, she took a step back and kicked him squarely in his ass.

Leaping forward, the Joker turned to press his back against the door, one hand supporting himself on the shiny metal handle that had aided him in his breaking-and-entering. She kicked a _lot_ harder than he expected her to. With his eyes outlined so heavily in black grease paint, the whites of his widened eyes stood out like the headlights of a quickly approaching car "Are you out of your mind?"

With a mockingly contemplative look, she glanced up to the ceiling, before giving him a couple of feigningly thoughtful nod. She crossed her arms higher on her chest. "Yeah, and you know...it's not as bad as I thought. I'm feeling a little strange tonight, so don't sit there and threaten me for having kicked you in your ass, when what I got from you-" She pointed once more at her black eye. "-is clearly nothing compared to the _emotional _scars." She shifted her weight to her other leg, and her curvy hip jutted out, giving her a shapely silhouette. "Great thing about narcissists – which you are, by the way – is that they can't stand to be ignored, and abandoned. In fact, it's their biggest fear."

He was learning a lot about this girl tonight. Never would he have expected that the malice that he'd seen in her face when she looked at Arkham would one day be directed at him. The smile that he had seen reflecting back at him so many times was now painted on her lips: sinister and heartbreaking.

"You abandoned me," she said, "so now I'm abandoning you."

He said nothing, only watching as her shuddering breath brought her shoulders to slump. He'd never seen her that way. The kind of emotional lava flow that poured from her mouth was so intense you could almost feel the heat rolling off of it. She could have breathed fire over him, burnt him to a crisp. But she didn't, and silently he wondered why.

It wasn't like him to just sit there and take abuse from anyone, let alone from women. But deep down, in the pit of his stomach, something willed his patience to take it. Worse yet, convinced him that maybe he deserved it.

"That's not what I wanted..." he mouthed to her, quietly.

"Oh, no? Shit! Ya coulda fooled me!" She looked at him like he had eighty-five heads. "What do you want? You wanna come back? Come back when I can see some bruises. Come back when I can see blood," she told him... silently, achingly, almost pleadingly.

But even though he had acted with all his patience, and even though he might have deserved it, he wasn't ready to retreat into the night again just yet. When he remained standing there, she turned to head back toward her bedroom, but before she could, she spotted the half-eaten cupcake on the counter by her keys. Almost as soon as her eyes fell on it, she felt the warmth of both of his thickly callused hands wrap around one of hers.

Her eyes remained fixed upon that cupcake even as he began speaking. "I don't want you to think that I did what I did, and said what I said to manipulate you," he told her. "I know it might look like that sometimes... it's hard to explain." Though he imagined that Harley had come to understand the patterns in his behavior (or lack thereof), it was difficult when the behaviors were, for the first time, being directed at her. "I just...kind of..._do_ things..."

"You got what you wanted. You got out...you got your fresh air, I assume a nice steak...what are you doing here?" she asked him finally, her eyes turning back to him, the tears that hung onto the very edges of her lower lid as lit up as the fluorescent lights in a sci-fi movie.

He released her hand, his face taking on a very stern appearance, although not one directed at her. He knew she stood there waiting for some kind of answer to validate the pain he had put her through. But at last, the only thing that emerged from his mouth was:

"I'm not entirely sure..."

With her back to him, the hand that he'd just grabbed hold of crossed itself over the other. He couldn't see her face, so the only expression he could take in was her posture, which stood so straight he could hardly pull anything from it. Taking in a deep breath, she heaved a large sigh before she spoke. "You took the one thing I wanted... and you used it against me to get what you wanted. But I should have seen it coming." An amused scoff escaped her tightening throat.

He could hear the emotions there, but his panicking mind ran to-and-fro trying to determine exactly what to do with the information. He wanted to run, as fast as his legs could carry him, out the way he had come and across town. He wanted to be anywhere but here... because he'd never had his heart in a vice before, let alone had to acknowledge that he _had _one to begin with. Six months ago, he wouldn't have cared. Six months ago, he would have killed her just to avoid feeling these emotions that she was pushing down on him, burying him in.

He wanted to die. He could have just reached into a pocket, pulled out a knife and slit his own throat... but when he realized he would kill himself before he so much as laid a finger on her, his breath escaped him, like a piece of his ugly soul had just climbed out from his heart and out into the air.

What had she done to him?

"What do you want?" he asked her, bluntly, quietly... in a tone that, while hardly soft and gentle by any normal man's standards, certainly must have sounded that way to her.

She turned on her heels and glared at him in shock, her furrowed eyebrows casting deep shadows over her eyes, the large whites around her irises standing out in the center of them. She shook her head in disbelief. "I beg your pardon?"

Taking off his gloves, one after the other, he slapped them down on the nearby countertop and used one of his now bare hands to scratch his scalp nonchalantly. "What do you _want_?" he asked, a little more assertively. If she was digging for an apology, this was as close as she was going to get to one.

Suddenly, the features in her face softened, and much to his relief, Harley appeared very much like she had before - the way she had on every single day her cheerful face came in to greet him. She smiled, and he felt the knots in his spine relax and lift away. Lifting one of her crossed arms in a lazy shrug, she chuckled once, shaking her head. "You know, 'I'm not entirely sure'."

Silence was golden to the Joker. It was in silence that he came up with new, mischievous little games. But the worst silences are when you know you should say something, but you can't. For a minute he thought how funny it was that pride could both shut you up and make you run your mouth, depending on the circumstance. He ran his hand down over his mouth thoughtfully, smearing some of the make-up there. She weaved a few strands of her hair behind her ear. And there they stood, for nearly a minute, like an auditory blinking contest, to see who the next one would be to break the silence.

He remembered hearing somewhere that the heart was always louder than the mind. That must have been why Harley spoke first. Each question she asked was hard to answer than the last.

"Why did you have to kiss me?"

She asked it defeatedly, like it had been this terrible act. He supposed to Harley, it had been.

He was tired taking the defensive. "Me, kiss you?" he asked, eyebrows raised high upon his head, appearing completely innocent in the act. "And here I was thinking that the _two _of us were involved!" He knew he had a point there. Minus the whole 'bashing her head against the table' thing, it hadn't been _all _bad.

He remembered being in the middle of it before he'd even known what was happening. In very much the same way an ice cube will immediately burn into stream, there was no middle stage. There had been no anger, or confusion...he felt very much the way one feels after they wake up having recovered from a very bad cold.

For the first time, he felt like he could breathe.

It was only afterward the the fear had settled in. Not of her, and what she would do, but of himself. There was shame, and insecurity, and all these things that swirled in his chest, which most of the time he made a point to ignore. Feelings he'd hardly ever felt before, things about himself he didn't want her to see. And so again, before he had realized what he had done, he'd found himself slowly lowering Harley's unconscious body to the ground.

He hated it! Insecurity was something alien to him... he ignored it, and when he ignored it, he could shape the world like a ball of clay. When he ignored it, people stood up to defy him. When he ignored it, he was a philosophical warrior...but best yet, when he ignored it, he became strangely stronger.

And so did she. When he showed weakness, she was weak... and when he showed strength, she became strong.

The thought struck him like a stroke of genius.

Determined, he took a few confident strides toward her and watched the small changes in her once he had readjusted his mindset. She reestablished eye contact, she uncrossed her arms, and although Harley's face reflected alarm, she didn't take a step back in fear, though she did place her hands on his chest to stop him from coming any closer.

"Wh...what are you doing?" she asked. Her eyes were fixated upon his face now, as he stopped to glance down at her hands on his chest.

"C'mere..." he whispered, and reached out for her face, but her muscles stiffened in retaliation to his advances. He plastered a last smile on his face as she attempted to fight him off, and it only turned their banter into a kind of playful row.

She fanned her hands at him to keep him away, a smile edging up on her mouth. "What are you doing?" she asked, her face straightening again when he grabbed both her wrists instead.

Now this was what he'd been looking for. He loved this little fearful look on her face, with just that tinge of pink in her cheeks. Happily obedient, yet respectfully fearful. He'd seen it in her a couple times before... particularly when he'd commanded her to stop talking down to herself all those months ago. There was something that simply transfixed her when he put your hands on her...

He was going to have to remember that.

She swallowed, hard. The two of them stood motionless in the white shadows cast from the world outside that somehow managed to stop spinning. "Wha...what are you doing?" she asked again, quietly.

"I'm going to kiss you," he told her bluntly, feeling the muscles in her arms tense in response. He grinned as he felt her pulse spike under the thin and delicate skin of her wrists.

"What? No you're not!" she protested, but he just tightened his grip on her, listening to her squeak, her fingers splaying up toward the ceiling with the added pressure of his palms.

He snorted his amusement. "Well, seeing as how you left the gun in the bedroom, I don't think you have much of a choice. Besides..." He trailed off a little bit, his gaze trailing between her eyes and her mouth, pulling her closer into him with a firm jerk on her wrists, her sleepy legs shuffling forward. "If you didn't know there was a certain element of danger in all this, you probably wouldn't have kissed me back, now would you?" he asked in a whisper, his face hovering just inches above hers.

Her eyes glistened, large and haunting, opening so wide that you could see all the whitespace surrounding the sky-hued orbs in the center. "Why are you doing this? To run away again?" she asked him breathlessly. Her heart pounded as though it might beat right out of her chest. "I told you, you could leave... I don't-"

"I'm doing this..." he told her, cutting her off, "because I want to..."

Still glistening up at him, her eyes couldn't be any shocked than they already were. "Okay..." she whispered drunkenly.

He sized himself up. This was the easy part. The hard part was not wanting to run away afterward.

Inhaling deeply, his approach was much like that of a band-aid – quick and painless. He pulled her arms up and over his shoulders, linking them behind his neck. He felt her fingers interlace, unintentionally tickling the nape of his neck. Her body was pressed up against his, and the starched silk collar of her kimono brushed the back of his hand as he placed his hands along her neck to pull her back in.

At first it was alien, hardly there even, the way awkward teenagers kiss on the dance floor of their first formal. As it went on, Harley stared at him in such close proximity, and he... well, he stared back because there was a complete lack of finesse in his kiss. Everything had started out fine... and then the Joker had experienced something very foreign to him, although it was one of his favorite tools.

He felt fear.

After a couple seconds, he pulled away and the two stared at each other. Harley appeared more understanding than anything else, her slightly pinkish lips curving into a coy smile.

He rolled his eyes. "Shit, I can do better than that..." he said, and somewhere, lingering just underneath the surface of his skin, found something he rarely had to go looking for – confidence.

He felt a tiny surprised squeak radiate from the back of her throat when he brought his lips down to hers with a kind of ravenous nature that was far truer to his character. It felt strange, but a good strange, like a car ride on the way to some place new. There were so many unexpected things about it, like how his sudden realization about Harley's responses to him seemed to carry over in everything he felt. The more heat he put in the kiss, the more it was returned. Like how something as simple as a pleased moan, or her fingertips brushing up the nape of his neck, had caused him to take a few steps to push her up against the edge of her marble counter top. Like how human his smile felt when he pulled himself away just long enough to lift her up onto said counter, or the rush of electricity that shot up him spine when she wrapped her calves around his hips.

Like cop sirens suddenly wailing in their direction.

The Joker's eyes flashed open, and anger returned to him. "Shit. Gotta go!"

He released her and started for the door while she managed to take a breath. "What? Those could be anything!" she protested, hopping down off the counter and rushing after him. "They could be... pu-pulling someone over."

"Oh-_ho_! You changed your tune pretty quick! You were begging me to leave ten minutes ago." The sirens drew a little closer. "Besides, I know they're coming for me," he said to her, moving from room to room to make sure he left no traces of himself behind. So far, the only things he had touched with his bare hands had been her.

She scoffed, heavily placing her hands on her hips. "Well... how do you know that?"

Standing at the doorway to the bathroom, he motioned for her to hand him his gloves, which she did with a large pout. Scrunching up his face, he bore all his teeth into an apologetic glance. "I kiiiinda had to kill your doorman."

Harley looked devastated. "You killed Marty?"

After slipping his gloves back on, he turned his eyes up to glare at her, gesturing to where he had just been perched on her counter. "Well, was it worth it?"

A grin tugged at her lips. "Whatever, he was kind of a dick anyway..."

He smiled at her, and she smiled back... and suddenly there was nothing to fear in this afterglow. The two of them just stood there – he was slightly smug, and she was shy, her eyes occasionally flashing up to him.

"C'mon... come with me," he asked her, motioning her to follow him out the door.

Blinking in surprise, she watched him place his hand on the doorknob, but she didn't budge. "No, Joker, I can't go with you."

Where before he had been a desert of calm, that sense of rejection rushed back like a turbulent tsunami. "What do you mean? What, what... you're just gonna stay there and play doctor with whatever toothless whackjob they set you up with?" His tone was mocking, but she simply grinned as she watched him fly off the handle. "Why are you so excited about a life that's not excited about you?" he asked, and then pointed to himself. "_I'm_ excited!"

Turning her eyes up to the ceiling, Harley bared all her sparkling white teeth. "I can see that..."

He drew his coat around himself and twisted his lips into a frown.

She chuckled and shook her head, drumming her fingers on the counter top. "That's not what I meant..." Inhaling deeply, she peered at the half eaten cupcake. "I mean... if I go with you, I want the world to know that I _chose _to go with you. I don't want to be some victim you kidnapped in the night... never to be seen again. I want them to now that it was my choice," she explained to him, softly.

And a little too slowly for his liking - the sirens edged closer still.

But he couldn't help but admit to liking the idea.

"Well... then you let me know when you're ready," he told her, just as softly, and was going to make his way back over to her when he heard three more sets of sirens join the pursuit.

His eyes widened. "Daddy's gotta go!" he said, and then bolted out the door, which quickly closed behind him. As he ran, he heard the deadbolt slide shut, and the chain lock slide back into place... and if it wasn't so much trouble to unlock them again, he might have just thought about going back.


	31. Chapter 31: Fire

The questions flooded her mind as a slew of cops filled her apartment less than ten minutes after the Joker had left. But they didn't bother Harley. She liked having a secret.

She had rushed around after he left, throwing out the half-eaten cupcake, rubbing off the slight red smear on the jug of milk he'd left in the office and shoving it back in the fridge. Sauntering back through her bathroom, she had looked at herself in the mirror, appreciating the red grease paint he'd left on her mouth for only a moment before scrubbing it away, and then waited. She moved around the place without a care in the world, happily lost in the rooms of her apartment, feeling as though the place couldn't possibly hold her anymore. Not her apartment, not her office, and certainly not Arkham Asylum.

Not anymore.

It hadn't been more than a few minutes after that before she'd heard the first knock on her door. She took her time answering, to give them the impression she had just left the comfort of her bed. Kimono wrapped tightly around her, she'd opened the door and squinted as the light from the outside halls had flooded in. Jim Gordon had been among them, and watched her with an incredulous glare.

She'd done her best to remain calm as she invited them in, and maintained a good act of naiveté as they walked around, poking about the objects in her apartment. Harley knew they wouldn't find anything unless they swabbed the place for DNA.

As they continued to make their way around the place, Jim had pulled her aside. "What are you doing here?" he'd asked her, concerned. Though she didn't have many friends, people had suddenly come out of the woodwork to offer up their couches to her, thinking Harley just couldn't stay at home now that the Joker had escaped. She had refused.

She had feigned shock when Jim told her about Marty, and then terror when he explained that they assumed it was the Joker. Who else would kill the doorman in Harley's building with a knife? Jim had insisted that she leave, and so she packed a bag and asked him politely to drop her off at Arkham Asylum. He obliged. After all, it was the only place in the city that the Joker wouldn't come looking for her.

And Arkham Asylum was exactly where she stayed for four days, putting in appearances so no one would suspect that she had gone home. Somehow, amazingly, it hadn't taken much to convince the police that she had not seen the Joker. She hadn't appeared shaken, and there certainly hadn't been any evidence laying around her apartment...and even beyond that, Jim trusted her.

Jim Gordon had known her since she was a child. He'd been the cop that arrived at her house, so memorably kind as he sat down in the family room of her old family home in East Gotham, and explained the crimes her father had committed. Although two of his friends had died that day, Jim still felt terrible for the young girl as she cried in her mother's arms, when she realized her father wasn't coming home.

But he'd stuck with Mrs. Quinzel and young Harley as the trial progressed. He hugged her when her father was sentenced to death. When she had told him she wanted to be a criminal psychologist, he had been supportive. He'd written the letter that got her this job. Jim Gordon had been a very subtle but strong influence in her life... and now, as Harley sat in her office, tearing through paperwork and leafing through the Joker's file, she wondered how should could have lied to him as easily as she had.

How on Earth could she have lied to Jim Gordon?

She'd begun to realize that spending time with the Joker had constantly caused her to question her integrity. It seemed like everywhere she turned she was cutting another corner for him, telling another lie, convincing skeptics of his innocence - and yet, was _she _convinced?

Why was she doing all this for him?

"Harl?" came the panicked tone of Molly's voice as she burst in through her office door. Suddenly, her internal turmoil was pushed from the forefront of her mind. The fear in Molly's tone was infectious, and the only thing she could think of was the Joker.

She rose from her desk, watching the girl with large worried eyes. Harley didn't know what would happen to her if something had happened to the Joker. Would she split in two? Fall into a heap? Shatter into a million pieces? How the man had become the very center of her world was beyond her, and she couldn't imagine what would happen to her if he'd been captured, or worse. "What's happened?" she asked hurriedly as Molly motioned her from the room.

Harley rushed out of her office and after Molly, both running down the hall toward the nurse's station. It gave Harley a considerable amount of relief to hear Molly say: "It's all over the eleven o'clock news. A.D.A Wright's house is burning to the ground as we speak. Firemen pulled his body out of the house moments ago."

Harley's hurried pace slowed as they came closer to the nurse's station, near the front entrance of the asylum. "Is he alright?" she asked, feigning concern. She wasn't one to wish death on anyone, but she didn't care very much about A.D.A. Wright's mortality. He had played hardball with her during her statement to the court, had questioned her integrity along with her professionalism...obviously she wasn't a huge fan of the man.

Molly must have been able to hear the disguised disdain in her voice, because she turned around with a look of utter disgust in her face. But the look quickly faded, and she gloomily shook her head. "No," she said, "he didn't die from the fire...he'd been knifed to death."

As she had been pushing open the door of the nurse's station, a few orderlies and nurses huddled around a small television set. Harley froze, and then turned wide-eyed to look at the girl.

"They think the Joker's still inside...and they're already getting helicopter reports that the Batman's vehicle was spotted on the way."

# # # # # #

Jim lifted himself out of the driver's seat of his cruiser, and his thumb firmly pressed the receiver button of his red Blackberry before he slipped it back into his pocket. The street was littered with patrol cars, firetrucks, ambulances, and SWAT, desperately looking for a way to combat the flames - and for a front row seat of what might happen next.

Wright had lived in a very expensive old brownstone in Gotham's south end, and the fire build in intensity, threatening to move from house to house. Fire crews were hesitant to turn on the water. They had people in there, looking to see if there were any survivors in the inferno that raged on within. Men had been sent in several minutes ago, and while a couple maintained radio contact, they'd lost it with two others. Pouring water over the place would make it impossible for those men to get out. Steam was just as difficult to navigate through as smoke.

"This fire will threaten the entire block if you don't start getting water into that house!" Gordon hollered over the screaming sirens to the fire chief, who stood along side on of the engines, prepping his men as they began to set up for another wave.

The chief was hesitant as he flipped through a check list on his clipboard. "All the residents on this block have been evacuated from their homes as a precaution. Right now, I'm focused on getting my men out of the building before I start worrying about property loss, Commissioner."

But there was a sense of electricity in the air, of excitement and intrigue. People gathered around from blocks away to watch the picturesque house go up in smoke. They came because they knew something darker and far more deadly lurked inside.

They came to see the Joker.

Jim knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was still inside. Just the same way Batman had known, when he had called him to share his information. As a cop, you learned the profile, the mannerisms, the tactics, so well that you could look at a crime scene and know who had committed the crime, so adamantly that you could still smell them in the room, like walking into a wall of bad cologne. The fire, and the shallow stab wounds they found covering Wright's charred body as they had rushed him to the hospital...it had the Joker's M.O. written all over it.

The fluttering of helicopter rotors hovered above him, and the flashing lights coupled with the burning heat, and the crowds of people being held at bay by the SWAT team made the place feel more like a crowded nightclub then a crime scene. While Jim made his way to speak to the leader of the SWAT team, he knew that when Batman arrived, it was going to take all the personnel he had here to keep the crowd from moving into a frenzy.

Batman deserved a bit more credit than that.

**# # # # # # # **

The hub of activity in front of the house detracted attention from the row of thickly brick-walled back gardens that the Tumbler was steadily speeding toward. The vehicle whirled and rumbled mechanically, its wire tires trending over the curb and up onto the grass before blasting through each of the vacant backyards of the rich brownstone community. The vehicle made quick work of them as those in the community kept their eyes on the blaze, as if encapsulated by some late-night bonfire. Flames ripped through the entire house, and the computerized system within the Tumbler's cockpit reported that the interior of the the house was reaching upwards of 500 degrees. At this rate, it would only be a few minutes before the floorboards of the old house collapsed, and it was easy to see that some of the flames were beginning to leap from house to house, latching and crawling onto the level roofs like a slowly approaching flood.

The gigantic engine of the monstrous black machine geared up and roared through the final dry-stacked wall, sending stone shrapnel spinning and splintering into the air, falling like volcanic ash. After the collapse of the wall, the hatch lifted from the Tumbler's roof, and Batman moved to rise up out of it.

"You're a little late to the party, my friend!" he heard a raspy voice call out.

Batman turned. Although the Joker's features were hidden by the intense light that flared and smoked behind him, he could see his silhouette lean over to dust the dirt from his vest and pant leg. "I'm sorry you didn't get an invite, but I figured since you and I are so close, you'd know where to come."

"What have you done?" Batman growled to him as he stepped down the front hood of the tumbler, his thickly soled boots striking the heavy metal with a bludgeoning sound.

The Joker seemed all too pleased to oblige him with a response. "Me? Oh, I'm just throwing myself a little going away party..." he explained, scratching the side of his neck with his gnarly, paint-caked fingernails. "I didn't get to have one _last _time, since you seem to have something against...fireworks."

Batman understood that partY all too well, recalling the ferries. The idea of another goodbye party, though, was lost on him. The Joker knew full well that if he didn't manage to escape now, he would be remanded to Blackgate to await trial, and yet, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew the Joker had already considered this, and had subsequently thought of some way around the little hiccup he had gotten himself into. There was no way he would have killed Wright and then merely waited in the backyard for someone to find him.

Leaning over, the Joker took hold of a crowbar that had been resting along the frame of Wright's barbecue. Inspecting it for a moment, he glanced over at the shrouded crusader with his devilish smile. "You know, I think you really believed that when you put me away, I was just going to stay there, didn't you?" he asked, wiping the index finger and his thumb along the corners of his mouth, spinning the iron rod with the other hand.

"I thought when I put you in Arkham, you'd be left in the hands of professionals with objectivity. Instead, you manipulated Jeremiah Arkham into handing over someone you could manipulate into bending over backwards to protect you."

Batman's menacing whisper seemed to strike a nerve with the Joker. His grip suddenly tightened on the crowbar, the leather of his glove squeaking as it ground around the metal. But instead of unleashing his anger just yet, Joker threw up his brows and considered the topic at hand. "Ah, yes... the good Dr. Harley Quinzel." He paused but took a quick breath before he continued. "She's a peach. Does absolutely anything I ask her to, which is great..." As he spoke, he reached into his pocket, retrieving his favorite knife, and inspecting it before hitting the release button on the handle. "...since it's important to know exactly _when _you go creeping into her apartment to hit her up for info on me."

Although Batman hadn't been expecting it, he tried not to let his surprise show. She had told him, when secretly he had hoped that she wouldn't. The Joker had asked her, and she had confessed. Although there was no way for her to know who he was under the mask, there was still some kind of betrayal that sunk into his heart. She trusted him far more than she should have, far more than was healthy for her.

Far more than he could ever hope to save her from.

But that had been the Joker's plan all along. And as much as Batman had willed himself against it, the Joker could hear the insecurity in his silence. "Yeah, that's right," he said, straight-faced. "I heard you paid a visit to my girl."

"If she's calling herself that, then she's just as crazy as you are," he said, and the Joker's face flattened. "You two deserve one another."

Smoke began billowing out of the building at an alarming rate, and it could easily have begun to spew from the ears of the Joker. Although it was clear to Batman that he was boiling to a fever pitch, he abruptly released the high-pitched cackling laughter that was his trademark.

It was haunting to him how, after all this time, it had managed to linger in his memory, as if he had heard it just yesterday.

"_Hoo-hoo-hoo!_ It's funny, isn't it?" the Joker cackled, lifting his knee and slapping it in hilarity, moving toward Batman with a few dramatic steps. "It was just a few months ago that you told me I didn't have a friend in the world! Now...I think that _I_ have more friends than _you_." His yellowish upper teeth came down upon his lower lip, tongue pressing to his cheek. "And you're making enemies even faster than I ever could. I bail from Arkham and they practically let me waltz right out the front door. Tell me, if that house behind me comes down, whose throat do you think they'll go after first: yours, or mine?"

Batman wished he could say it wasn't true.

"The good people of Gotham have waited long enough, don't you think? They want _blood_. Your blood, my blood...doesn't really matter." The Joker waved his hand in dismissal. "But as for that idea of yours? That this city is filled with people who want to believe in good...? I guess you have to consider exactly how well they treat their heroes, if they're constantly after your neck, huh?"

The fire raged on behind him, and steam had begun billowing out around the two of them as the teams out front began dousing the estate in a flood of cold water. Drops rained down onto the two of them with force that struck like the stingers of bees, and pounded the Tumbler like hailstones against a tin roof.

Calling out over the downpour and the sirens and the wailing of helicopter rotors, Batman stood with the conviction of his revelation from that night, so long ago. "Gotham City doesn't need a hero. It doesn't need you or me. It deserves to stand on its own legs, free of the manipulation or the ideologies that either of us can feed it. Gotham doesn't need you."

"You _reeeally_ are naïve. Here I thought I'd given you enough time, but clearly..." The Joker growled, his tone descending into a throaty groan as he gripped the shaft of the crowbar tightly, chunks of fiery debris impacting around them. "I need to _beat_ it into you."

He was lighter; Batman could feel it in the force of his swing, in the way the crowbar came down against his carbon fiber-plated arm. It lacked the power it had before, most likely due to poor nutrition and a lack of physical activity. But what he lacked in weight, the Joker easily compensated for in speed, as he quickly dodged the spiked gauntlets when Batman brought his forearm down to rake across his chest. The attack left him open to a strike to the stomach.

Which, of course, the Joker took.

Swinging the crowbar with both arms like a baseball bat, the iron rod connected with such force that Batman buckled over, feeling his two bottom ribs snap inward, caving in toward his spine. Feeling the sole of the Joker's weather beaten shoe connect with his abdomen, he was pushed back and landed heavily in the burning grass below. Wrapping his arm around his midsection, he rolled over onto his stomach, far enough away to pull himself quickly to his feet – but the Joker made no move to attack him again. Not yet, anyway.

"I'm not here trying to change the world - I just lent out perspective! Free of charge! You and your ideas... you're _sooo_ self-righteous, and really, twice as funny as I'll ever be," the Joker chided, laughing his maniacal laugh once again. "_I'm_ the one who's supposed to be the narcissist, after all."

Through labored breathing and a hunched posture, Batman peered up to his endless aggressor, as he spun the crowbar around his hand much like one would do with a pen. "The things this city represents," he grit out, "the faith this city has for a better future...those ideas aren't mine... they belong to every man, woman and child who's ever lived here. I can't fight for what I believe..."

"Oh, why not?" the Joker cooed. "You think that little Gotham is going to actually grow the balls to stand up and fight for itself? What kind of vigilante are you?"

"We are not men. We are ideas..." Batman brought himself up to his full height once again. "And we're only as powerful as the people who stand behind us."

But the words were lost on this man who stood before him, seemingly unshakable in his beliefs. After all, if he could so readily convince the good doctor of his logic, then who was to say that the rest of Gotham City would not just as easily fall prey to those ideas? Grinning, the crowbar spun to a halt inside the Joker's palm, and his deep chuckling rumbled up from his diaphragm. "Oh, I don't need to convince everyone... I don't need to win people over to the dark side. I just needed _one_... and she followed me like a happy little lamb to the slaughter."

"Harley will never be like you!" Bruce called out angrily from behind the mask of Batman, but it only seemed to give the Joker the jet fuel he needed to pursue him again.

"No... you're right." The Joker set himself up to take another enormous swing at the battered ribs of the caped crusader. "She's better." His swing came down upon Batman once again, but instead of buckling over in pain as he had, he took the hit full-on and let out his own mighty growl, swinging upward and striking the Joker hard against his chin, sending him up off his feet and back several paces where he struggled to maintain his footing before falling down all together.

Batman went to his full height once again, arching his back to alleviate the muscle seizures. Groaning heavily, much as he had as he had while he hung upside down all those months ago, the Joker brought a hand up to lazily rub his jaw. "Nice one..." he groaned, his hand flopping defeatedly back to his side.

"They're going to throw you in Blackgate and throw away the key," Batman said.

But the Joker only laughed. "Maybe you're the one...who needs to have a little faith."

# # # # # # # #

Throughout the asylum, one could hear the heavy double doors swing open into the massive lobby and then crash back upon their hinges. Everyone pulled their heads up to look, and all were awash with shock over what was happening before them.

The circus was in town.

From the front entrance, the Caped Crusader took wide, strong strides through the front corridor of the asylum. His form was massive and intimidating – Adonis carved from onyx stone. Behind him, he heaved and controlled one-handedly a beaten but flailing Joker, dragged unwillingly behind him, reluctant to be within the walls of this place again. He gnashed his teeth and snarled like a wild animal. Just the air of this place seemed to sear his skin, like holy water splashed upon a sinner. And behind him, the iron-willed but clearly anxious Commissioner Gordon followed them, and when the doors slammed closed behind the three, the scene was complete.

The Joker was returned. Justice had been affixed upon her podium. Gotham could breathe again.

Those inside the asylum held a collective breath all the same, waiting as the drama unfolded before them. Orderlies, nurses, and doctors seemed to have dropped everything and rushed out from every angle to arrange themselves in the setting. Most of them were shocked upon seeing the Joker - bloodied, swollen, and smelling faintly of smoke and gasoline. Some of those with more senior positions in the asylum waved a set of horrified nurses and orderlies back to their stations, and away from the action.

But the strangest part about the whole scene was not the costumed identities, or the dramatic tale they wove, but the silence they seemed to carry with them. No one said a word, but looked on openmouthed, knowing that in the future, people would ask _"Where were you when Batman captured the Joker?_" And they would be able to give the most fantastical of answers.

It wasn't long until, weaving down the wooden ballroom stairs of the asylum, Jeremiah Arkham called the attention of all those who found themselves engrossed in the scene. "What in good God is going on down here?" he asked, in ringing, commanding tones. Although he might have been the furthest removed from the situation, he naturally insisted upon controlling the scene.

However, as soon as he had asked the question, Batman came to a halt, and readily thrust the Joker into the arms of several orderlies, who rushed to stop him from falling to the ground. Looking on with awe at the sudden and unexpected delivery, the old doctor turned to Commissioner Gordon, without so much as looking at the two men who had made the spectacle that much more surreal. "What is the meaning of this, Gordon?"

"Well, Arkham, I'd say we're returning the Joker, but I think you and I both know that I'm actually writing you a big, fat check..." Jim quipped, his expression softly coy.

But as Arkham opened his mouth to reply, a very audible sound cut him off - a sound that silenced the entire room once again. Though it was a simple sound, its atmosphere was far more ominous than the struggle just moments before. Everyone turned to see what boomed out in a rhythmic pace from further down the windowless, harshly lit corridor.

The sound itself was the hard, commanding clicking of a set of high-heeled shoes, worn by a woman who could have burned as hot as the sun: her hands balled into tiny fists, her shoulders pulled back to arch her into perfect posture, her lifted chin giving her a dignified appearance, her eyes sharp and unrelenting as they peered down to the end of the hall. Her gaze made quick work of establishing exactly who was the most intimidating person in the room.

It wasn't Batman anymore.

She stood in the center of the hallway a mere forty or so feet away. With her lab coat tapered tightly to her waist, and a black tie over a blood-red shirt, Harley appeared unrecognizable to the two men at the end of the hall, looking back at her wide-eyed. Both had known her, but neither of them seemed to know her anymore, and didn't know exactly how to react as those heels came crashing one again, this time heading toward them. She swept across the hall in the way a jungle cat moves along the branches of a tree, hunting its next meal. Her steps started out as slow and rhythmic as before, but as she came closer, the pace quickened, her lab coat churning and rippling as she rushed quickly along the tiles of the floor.

The Batman might have believed that she had been rushing to the side of the ailing Joker, had she not kept her eyes so sternly fixed upon his.

No one stopped her; no one had been expecting what came next. There was something about the world around them all that seemed to move in slow motion as Harley strode past the Joker, her pace quickening once again to approach the Batman, and although he had several inches over the young doctor, she had no difficulty reaching back her swing and connecting that tiny, unforeseen fist of rage hard and blunt against the left side of Batman's jaw. The strike was so completely unexpected that the darkly cloaked man staggered back against the wall, as the remaining men who stood nearby struggled to restrain her from attacking him again.

The corner of Batman's mouth had begun to bleed as Gordon and Arkham held her by the shoulders and waist, her legs kicking and struggling to free her as she screamed at him in a frightening pitch. "This is your hero, Gotham? This is your _knight_?" When Gordon tugged at her once more to pull her away, she spat at the source of her fury like a viper, striking the graphite mask that covered Batman's identity so adequately.

Turning his face aside sharply to avoid her, Batman came eye-to-eye with the Joker, who burst out once again in his pained laughter, holding his stomach and writhing as he watched the scene unfold. When he turned back to Harley, she had managed to convince the two who held her that she had calmed down sufficiently, holding her hands up over her head. They released her, but reluctantly.

Lowering her arms, Harley pulled the hem of her blouse to straighten it, her chin once again tilting up to gaze upon Batman in a look of well-practiced pretentiousness. "Gordon, your auxiliary task force has taken to bullying the mentally ill. What's next? I'm sure Texas could use his help. They're so taken with victimizing patients with mental retardation. Seems like the next logical step for this disgraceful, misplaced gym-class hero, does it not?" she asked, in an acidic tone that left Gordon reeling.

"Harley..." he pleaded, but she continued.

"No! _Really_, Gordon. The man is mentally ill! And you send your best-kept secret after him?" And now she turned to point her poisonous rant in the Commissioner's direction "You're not much better, I'll have you know! You yourself painted this man as a villain, for what reason? So you could keep him in your back pocket? Use him when you need him and then throw him away?"

"Harley, please..." Dr. Arkham called out to her in his most soothing tone, and placed a hand on her shoulder to calm her.

She knocked it away, viciously. "Don't even get me started on _you_, old man! You're the worst of them all!" she hissed, her lips curling up at disgust. The three of them had formed around her in a circle, standing and watching in complete stupefaction at her words. Harley was never one to fly completely off the handle. Now here she was, doling out judgment upon each of them, one-by-one. "I feel like I'm the only one who understands! Am I really the only one who sees this? How good men have done on to do dreadful, horrible, malicious things?" Her pointing finger swept past each of the men before her. "All of you are guilty to some extent - have committed some terrible indecency - and yet you go to sleep at night, completely self-righteous, believing yourselves to be good, and honest, and justified!"

"Harley..." Jim's voice was thickening with emotion as he tried to stop her, interrupt her, plead for her to think about what she was saying.

"You are not justified!" her shrill voice stabbed back at him, when his dark brows furrowed into a concerned glance. "You lie, and you place blame, and you cheat, and you strategize, and you _plan_, but because you work under the ruse of justice, you believe that your morality is true, and your ethics are justified." From her molten rant came a dangerous smile, one that spread across her red lips slowly as she shook her head in disbelief. "You're not justified... you're _all _bad men, trying to convince yourselves you're good," she whispered softly, a look of sheer devastation passing over her face. "What Gotham needs...are good men, and you have proven them to be of incredibly short supply."

All three faces, whether hidden behind glasses or masks, turned to guilty expressions, heads hanging slightly. Glancing up over the frosted lenses of his glasses, Jim watched as Harley continued. "How do you navigate this minefield of disasters and crime? Do you do what your heart tells you to do? Do you trust in your ability to do good things?" she asked all three of them, and then looked back to the Joker, who although aching, smiled up at her with resolution

"I'd say those things count for something, Doll... but I don't think Harvey Dent would agree with you, if he could give you _his _side of the story," he explained with a chuckle, watching as curiosity came over Harley's face.

"Shut him up already!"

"Oh, but why, Commissioner? Why, when she's so close to seeing all you heroes for what you truly are?" Joker asked manically, still watching Harley's face as a couple of orderlies pulled him to his feet, attempting to drag him off. Though he wasn't resisting, nearby, a doctor readied a syringe of sedatives.

"Shut him up already!" Now it was Arkham who barked at them, moving to take the syringe from the fumbling doctor, but Harley held her arms out to stop him, listening intently to the Joker.

"Think about it, Harley. Why would they victimize the Batman if it wasn't to canonize Gotham's White Knight? Especially after I dosed him with that high-precision perception of mine?" he asked her, with an intensifying crescendo in his voice the further and further they pulled him down the hall.

_Harley-Girl..._ Her father's words echoed in her mind, as memories of his happy face fluttered in her memory. It was the day they'd sat on the stoop, and watched as her mother promised to be home early from a weekend with the girls. _Always remember: honest men lie where liars tell the truth._

Her mother didn't come home until Tuesday.

And the truth washed over her like a wave.

"Think about it Harley! Why would they keep that from you? From Gotham?"

She broke.

Her heart shattered into a million tiny pieces and snowed down on her like shattered glass - painful, sharp, catching on every fond memory, every good impression, every kind word that every good man had ever said to her. Harley placed her hands over her mouth as her eyes welled up with tears. There was nothing left for them to convince her of, nothing left they could do to save her from the truth.

All hope was lost, and there was nothing more to hold on to.

But -

Sometimes you have to let go to see if there was anything worth holding onto.

"Harley..." Batman's gruff voice called out to her, the three men now standing around that which the Joker had created.

Caught in the devastation of their lies, her bleak face turned to him. "Shut up..." she said bluntly, before calmly removing her lab coat, and holding it out for Dr. Arkham. "I quit..."

There was another face that joined the devastation when she whispered that. The Joker's expression faltered, as the orderlies tethered his arms behind his back and pulled him out of the corridor and into the elevator.

"Harley!" Jim called out to her as she straightened the hem of her blouse once more and took a few faint steps toward the open doors. "I'm sorry! We did what we had to do..." He tried to explain, but she said nothing, continuing to walk at a slow pace toward the door. "_Harley_! I'm sorry..."

"No, Jim..." she whispered, hard but delicate, her hand trembling upon the handle of the massive oak doors. "Not as sorry as you're gonna be."

And then Dr. Harleen Quinzel was gone.


	32. Chapter 32: Over&Out

To be mad is to be so many different things.

It is a noun, a word locked in description. It can be steadfast like a rock, or deeply rooted like a tree. It is an adjective that describes the being of a man, his twisted insides, and his sickening mind. However, most importantly, it is a verb; it is the very action of a roiled mind. Madness strikes out like a blade, and where it cuts apart society, it leaves behind it new perspective, land untouched save for true pathfinders, revolutionaries in the field of revelation.

Madness is so much more than mere disease – it is passion, the catalyst of change, the result of men pushed too far along the edge only to find themselves over it. It is a sudden momentum, like losing your footing in the dark as your legs frantically try to keep up with your falling body. Madness hurls you into depths unknown, leaves you scraped, bloodied, and raw, but sometimes, what it leaves you with is so much more than soft padded walls and a tightly bound and buckled jacket.

Sometimes, when you pair your madness with complete solitude, you'll find that your mind has a very funny way of working things out.

And _that_ was exactly what happened to Harley upon waking.

_Harleyquinn... _The Joker's voice had called out from inside her head, and her eyes flashed open from what had been a bottomless sleep, deep below the regular levels of unconsciousness.

The room remained faded in its several shades of blue, the night still steeping in from outside, and for a moment she had wondered if it had all just been a dream. But then she remembered the car ride home. She remembered parking by the reservoir and beating her steering wheel, screaming and crying and wishing she had the courage to rip out every hair from her head as she took massive fistfuls of her stringy tresses. She remembered coming up to the apartment, tossing her keys on the table by the door, her face stinging and salty with hot tears that she had left for the midnight spring breeze to evaporate from her cheeks.

Swearing she could still feel the condensation in her ears, where her tears had collected as she slept, she rubbed her weary eyes and glanced down to the beaming green alarm clock that sat unmoved on her bedside table. Harley wasn't entirely sure how long she had been asleep, and deep down, she didn't really care.

She had gone through the motions of a regular workday morning, checking her cell phone and noticing messages and missed calls – noticing the symptoms of her apathy. Turning on the speaker phone, she walked to the bathroom, listening to the familiar voices ring out from the telephone.

"_Harley, it's Jim Gordon. You and I need to talk about all this... I don't want you to leave all this with the wrong impression on..._" There was a soft hesitation in his voice, and he sighed. "_Listen, just... call me, wouldya_?" he asked, and then hung up.

He was a liar, and a fraud, and he had so easily pulled wool over the eyes of the people he claimed to so dearly love, and she hated him. All Harley could do was hate him as she reached under the sink in her bathroom and pulled out a large jug of hydrogen peroxide, which she kept around mostly when she went into overdrive during obsessive-compulsive cleaning mode.

She glanced down at the jug she sauntered out of the room, moving toward the kitchen where she sifted through the cupboards. As she discovered what she was looking for, the voice in the next message rang out through the apartment, making the peach fuzz on her arms stand at attention.

"_Harley_," it called out, "t_his is Jeremiah Arkham._" Her lips curled as she pondered the intentions of his call, and she grimaced as she continued to listen. She plucked a large plastic bowl from the cupboard, along with a box of baking soda from her refrigerator, before moving from the kitchen and back into the bathroom. "_I just wanted to call you and let you know that I've taken your resignation very seriously, to say the very least. I expect that at some point over the next few days that you will bring back all of your security badges and files, since they are company property._"

As he spoke, Harley mocked his pretentious tone, flapping her lips along with his voice as if he was speaking in nonsensical tongues. "_The Joker will be transported to Blackgate prison on the fifteenth of March, and I would like to have all our belongings back on that day in case we need to share some of our information with the penitentiary._"

Scoffing, Harley pulled a large bag of Epsom salts from underneath her sink and poured them into the bowl. "_Anyway_!" And his tone changed dramatically at this point, while she harvested a large tin of coconut hair oil from her medicine cabinet, also pouring a handsome portion into the mix. "_I do hope you're feeling alright, and if you ever find yourself in need of someone to talk to, you know where to come!_" his voice chimed out, and Harley thought she might be sicker from the saccharine tone in his voice than from the fumes of her impromptu laboratory.

There was silence for a moment as she poured the baking soda into the mixture, along with the hydrogen peroxide. What resulted from the mixture was a very thick paste, sulfurous in scent, which seemed to waft through the air so thickly that Harley had to turn on the vent.

But then there came another voice, a soft inviting voice that made her switch off the fan to listen closely.

"_Harley? It's Bruce Wayne. Listen, I heard that you quit Arkham the other night. It's all over the news, the way the brought the Joker back... I..."_ Falling silent for a moment, her face softened as she listened to him struggle to find exactly the words to say to her over such an impersonal format as this. "_You and I should grab a cup of coffee, you know? We should talk. My offer to work for the medical division still stands... I just..._" He paused again, and Harley leaned her head up against the wall of her bathroom, listening to the voice that left her heart conflicted. "_Just call me, alright?_" he asked again, and then he was gone.

"_You have no more new messages,_" came the robotic voice of the speaker phone.

Madness is so many things... but is it enough to really tear you away from your life? Or rather, does it transform that life? Can you look yourself in the mirror when it does?

_Are you there?_ Something resembling her own voice called out to her from inside her heart. _Do you read __me? _

She stood above the fumes of the bowl, letting those bleaching chemicals envelop her, letting them mutate her brain, as she sharply watched her figure in the mirror.

"Oh, I've never been more than ordinary..." she spoke aloud, beginning an internal conversation that had been put on hold for so long. "Sure, I've had some slides with greatness. Might have even come close a time or two. But this..." And here she closed her eyes and turned her head, refusing to believe that the tears were coming back, and chalked it up to the chemical concoction by the bathroom sink. "This is so much bigger than anything I've ever done. How can I say no to this, and think of myself as anything more than mediocre?"

The conflict ran as deep as a canyon in her mind, like the cleft which worked to separate it from its sides. It scarred into the lines between her thoughts, made her ponder each perspective, overanalyze each prediction, and in the end, what could she do but stand beside he who had created her? Inside, somewhere and without her own admission, she had vowed to pursue him, like Frankenstein's monster in reverse. He'd become as much a part of her as her own past had, and after only five months he had rewired her, made her stronger, made her better...

And Bruce Wayne could never do that.

"Honestly, what have you got left to lose?" she whispered to herself, almost nonchalantly as she snapped a pair of latex gloves over her hands, "Because if there's anything at all...baby, it just ain't worth havin'."

Sizing herself up in the mirror, she placed both her hands on the ledge of the countertop and looked down at the concoction before her. Going back to blond was something Harley thought she'd never do... but it was time for a drastic change. It was time to stand out again. This time, she wouldn't take backstage. This time there wasn't going to be anything ordinary about her.

Besides... the Joker had told her once she'd look better as a blond.

* * *

"You have a good eye, Mrs. Ferguson," one of the sales representatives at Gotham Luxury Car Rental cooed to her as she crouched down next to the rear driver's-side wheel. He referred to the name on the credit card that she had provided him. Harley had stolen it earlier that day, right from the purse of some inattentive socialite housewife who was spending her afternoon drinking champagne at Gucci while some poor sales attendant squeezed her foot into an unappealing and unfortunate shoe.

His compliment didn't go unnoticed, and she peered up at him over her sunglasses, a coy grin forming on her ruby red lips. "Oh, well I like to think so. I own an Audi myself... but it's in the shop for a few weeks while we wait for a part to come in from Germany." She lied without missing a beat and stood up from where she had been inspecting the car, flipping a shock of her platinum blond hair over her shoulder. "This is the 2007 model, isn't it?"

"Yeeeeaas, Mrs. Ferguson! Remarkable! How did you guess?" he asked her pleasantly. He was a young man, probably no more than twenty-five. All young salesmen have this nervousness in their voice, as if caused by their mismatched ties being drawn too tightly around their necks.

She scoffed at what he'd said. "I didn't _guess_. I knew! I knew because these are the nineteen-inch rims, instead of the standard twenty-ones on earlier models."

Harley didn't know cars that well... in fact she hardly knew anything about cars at all. She leased a BMW, only because she'd known the prestige of owning a luxury vehicle would impress Dr. Arkham, back when she actually cared about his opinion. It drove beautifully, but really, you paid the seven hundred dollars a month for the little blue and white medallion on the front hood, nothing more.

What Harley _did_ know a lot about was _this_ particular car. She knew so much about it because she was a stickler for research, and what her research had shown her that this was the kind of car that one would to appear invisible. It was black, small in stature, its windows slightly darkened, and appeared as a hatch-back - very much a family vehicle. However, the 2007 model was notorious for its V-8 engine that housed three hundred and ten horses, while reaching speeds as high as two hundred miles an hour. It was unassuming, and powerful, and easy to operate as long as you could drive stick. In short, all those facts had told Harley something very important...

This was the perfect getaway car.

"Fabulous!" she chimed out to the young man and smiled at him, her large blue eyes still hiding behind her favorite wayfarer glasses. "I'd like to rent it for the next week if you don't mind."

And while getting the young sales man to cave to her every need had been a piece of cake, not everything had been quite so easy of late...particularly earlier that week, when she had stared down the length of a balance beam from several yards away.

Harley wasn't the kind of person who required that things come to her on a silver platter. She wasn't even the kind of person who had emotional problems when it came to failure. Failing had always left a kind of stale taste in her mouth, but as she aged, it didn't lose its flavor; it only became a little easier to swallow. That was, until she'd realized that it had been a couple months since she had even been to her gym, and quite possibly a year since she'd tried to mount the balance beam.

"Harley...do you think it's such a good idea?" chirped on of the younger girls who looked on. She was fifteen, petite, flat-chested, and had the body of a gymnast. Harley's curves has filled out years ago, leaving her heavier and feeling far less graceful and lithe than the tiny little specimen that stood to her right.

"It's been years since you've done a routine like this, hasn't it?" she asked again in that tiny little munchkin voice.

Harley wanted to snap her throat in half.

"Shut up!" she snapped at the girl, shaking out her arms as she prepared to launch herself onto the beam. "It's just like riding a bike..." she whispered to herself, before taking a few lunging strides toward the spring-loaded vault and launching herself through the air and into a flip. Instinctively her hands wrapped around the felted bar, her back arched around, and her feet came to land, one in front of the other, perfectly balanced. Gasping as her torso came up to lift vertically, her arms swiftly spread out to her sides to keep her balanced.

There was a wave of pleasure that came over her. Harley felt fifteen again.

While it hadn't been that long since Harley had done a flip (barely two weeks ago, at the Joker's own request), she felt as though she had done it for the first time. There was a shiver that traced down her spine, and pushed her nerves into a full-body shudder. Harley was in her thirties now, and standing beside the bar, glancing up at her, even one of the best young gymnasts in Gotham was in awe.

"_Niiiice_ mount, Harley!" she chimed, chalk dusting off in a small cloud from around her hands as she applauded. "Maybe you do still have it after all."

Perhaps she did... which wasn't to say that the day didn't come with its share of tiny little mishaps. For instance, Harley had forgotten how painful it was to miss the beam altogether and come hurtling down on it, crotch first, or having to barrel-roll yourself into a dismount because of misplaced footing. But each time her bare feet struck the beam, she felt the seconds tick away on the amount of preparation time she had before doing backflips on balance beams once again became a thing of the past.

Even as the gym owner walked out with her at the end of the night to lock up, there was a sense of melancholy. She had walked away from so many familiar places in the last few days – Arkham, hell... even little things like shopping for groceries at the bodega around the corner from her, or leaving her childhood gym held a kind of significance for her. There was a loneliness in it.

In class, they train you to pick up on the very subtle hints of a suicidal patient. They go through a stage of preparation and mourning, separating themselves from old friends, loved ones, places familiar to them. They settle debts, pay off bills, cancel credit cards, magazine subscriptions, their satellite television. Harley felt a little like that... as if saying all these tiny little ritualistic goodbyes was somehow her way with disconnecting with her life as she knew it.

"You alright Harley?" the gym owner had asked her, as she reached into her purse for the keys to her minivan parked a few yards away.

Snapping out of her reverie, Harley peered up at her blankly for a moment, smiling her usual coy smile. "Yeah... I'm fine. I'll see you around, alright?" she asked, although she didn't wait for a response. It had been a tough place to walk away from, but not nearly as bad as when she stood in the middle of her family room, glancing casually at the ruin left behind her.

Clothes had been pulled out of drawers, stored away in boxes she had taken to storage, kept under the _oh-so-anonymous_ name of Vanessa Ferguson.

What life she was headed to, she didn't know. She didn't even know if there was a life waiting for her there. She did know that very soon, very quickly, every ounce of life could leave her.

Zipping her duffel bag shut, she turned to look over the breadth of her apartment. The photo albums that sat in the corner of her office, the glass bottles that stood aligned in her fridge, the pristine white furniture... Harleen Quinzel's life... wrapped up in twelve-hundred square feet.

Struggling to take a breath, she stepped out into the hallway, locking the door for the last time, the bolt falling closed with an ominous click that reminded her so much of the gun that she carried in her bag. Leaving this place for the last time was more of a struggle than she had initially imagined, but what was she really leaving behind? The floor-to-ceiling windows, the Egyptian cotton sheets, the expensive bottled water, and the life of solitude?

_Why are you so excited for a life that isn't excited about you? _

The Joker's voice rang in her head, clear as a bell.

_I'm excited. _

Pulling the key from the lock, she smiled and looked over the door, and every part of her body turned toward her journey. Her smile was the last to follow. "Me too..." she whispered, making her way toward the elevator.

Heading down to the ground floor, past the empty security desk and the blood stains still left there, she moved through the revolving glass door, into the cool early spring air that washed up from the nearby Finger River, which stretched along the street and captured the late evening lights that surrounded it. Harley loved how quiet the streets were around this time of night - how she could have come out here in a house coat and no one would have noticed, even though every towering edifice that surrounded her was a monument of reflective glass.

Eyes staring out endlessly before her, she reached into her pocket, taking the apartment key from off her lonely-looking key chain. Then she broke across the empty street in a slow jog, though no vehicles appeared to be coming in either direction. The Finger River rushed as it collected with the meltwater of the deteriorating snow that had collected in the eaves of old buildings, and danced around street corners. The water gurgled bast the brick walls that stood at either side of its banks, snaking its way to the broad and picturesque Gotham River that reflected the light of Downtown's skyscrapers against a heavy terracotta sky, the color winter clouds turn when they meet with the orange streets lights of the city.

Standing along the railing, she looked over and into the black water. Her skewed reflection stared back up at her.

_Are you there?_ some internal voice, now barely recognizable, whispered out to her. _Do you read me? _

Taking a deep breath, Harley opened her palm and stared down at that apartment key once again, and then nonchalantly tossed it in the river. It made a tiny _plunk_ as it dropped into the water, and Harley could see the light sparkle off it as it danced it's way to the bottom.

The silence. She basked in it, the way you can when the only thing you hear is the distant sound of waves on a beach, or how sometimes, when there's no wind and no traffic, you can hear the sound of snow falling. It was the kind of peace that Harley truly hated, but now, she drank in every second of it. She did because she knew some part of her would miss it, some part of her that would forever live in a world of war, some part of her that would forever wish for that sweet and silent hereafter.

And like an intrusive gong to that peace, there came a violating, assaulting ringtone that shot like a bat out of hell from the depths of her pocket. Angrily retrieving her phone, she looked at the screen, noticing the call display reading Bruce Wayne's name.

She watched it sit there, jiggling in her hand as the song repeated itself a couple times. There was a moment of conflict before the rage washed over her.

"Harleen doesn't live here anymore," she growled as she heaved her arm back, sending the phone through the air and splashing heavily into the Finger River. And the peace returned, if only for a moment. Leaning against the railing, she looked over over the water for a few moments longer, before retrieving the last remaining key from her pocket: the one for the rented Audi that sat parked in front of the apartment building.

Time was running out, and there was far too much to do.

#####

Perched atop the sloping roof of some overtly decorative church steeple, Harley held onto an old wire antenna to steady herself while she looked over the glittering cityscape. The rush of the vehicles below sounded like a box of purring kittens, miles beneath where she stood now.

Surely, if anyone had seen her like this, spotted her up here, it would have been impossible to assume that she was a real person, let alone someone who was capable of such things. Had it been anyone who had known her personally... well, she would have been completely unrecognizable, if it wasn't for the fact that, beyond the pleading messages on her answering machine, this was the only path for her left to follow.

And while there was a moment where she considered tumbling helplessly from that roof, and onto the street below, there was a kind of forgotten sadness about suicide that left Harley waning. After all... she was sure they expected her to kill herself, but she knew that no one would ever expect this.

The arches of her feet rolled over the rounded metal beam right at the top of the steeple, as a cool breeze pushed past her, causing the blond fringe above her lightened brow to flutter into a thorny golden crown. The molten light from the city below caught her darkened features. Harley's lips, as dark and red as fresh blood. Her skin, a softer hue of creamy ivory. Nowhere near as pale as the Joker's had been, but enough to give the distinct feel of flawless porcelain. And those eyes, the eyes that scanned the city, as if searching for something mistakenly lost... but lost in the way one loses their childhood. All it takes is one incidence... one fall from grace, and then the child is gone, never to return. Akin to realizing that Santa is a storybook character, or that it's your mother stuffing money under your pillow when you've lost a tooth.

Around those deep, endlessly seeking orbs was the only color Harley had found that made them stand out. Their usual draper gray seemed to echo the color of a tropical ocean wave caught within the shadow of a hurricane. Black surrounded her eyes in a contoured cat eye design. Silver began at the inside corner of her eye and moved out, turning darker and darker, until they dusted the outer tips of her brows in the darkest instance of carbon.

_Are you there?_

"No..." she whispered to herself, her hand releasing the antenna she'd been loosely holding onto, before reaching up to tie her hair into a set of high-strung pigtails. But she couldn't help but wonder -

"What if I wasn't ever really there to begin with?"

Twisting her body, she walked along the length of the beam, moving along the very top of the steeply built church roof. There was no need for her to exercise caution here, and she appeared to walk on such a precarious ledge the same way one would walk down the sidewalk. This was the easy part. What she had come to prove to herself was whether or not the idea of her future actions were enough to scare her into submission, into acceptance of her mediocre existence.

Did she have what it took to walk beside him? The strength to pull the trigger? Why would she want to?

_Do you read me? _

And as if the little voice in her head had not heard her the last time, she called out "_No!_" while clutching handfuls of her tied-off hair, in an attempt to finally silence these two nagging questions.

"Because no matter what, I've never been excited about my life! About what I do... about my job... about my car... and I'm just sick! I'm just..." Here she heaved a big sigh as she released her grip, exhaling a misty, early spring breath as she looked out over the lights once again. "Sick..."

Listening again to see if her own internal voice would come back, she was met with only a few lonely minutes of silence. Her mind had given up. There was no use fighting for something that seemed to have been extinguished – snuffed out the night that Harley had realized how little was left to the heroes of Gotham City.

But if these were Gotham's heroes, what about the villains?

Reaching behind her back, and inhaling another deep, careful breath, Harley looked down over the folded, curved piece of leather she held before her – this, along with a tightened, augmented pleather catsuit, had been the fruit of her labor over the past week since she'd quit Arkham. She slipped the headdress on, securing her pigtails within the arched points of the fitted leather.

And now, from within a fitted holster, sewn invisibly into the back of the villainous uniform, she withdrew her father's sparkling, ppolished, freshly oiled Magnum revolver. Giving it a long once-over, she peered over her shoulder and down the length of the beam at the very peak of the roof she was balancing on.

"Well, if it's worth doing well, it's worth practicing for..." she cooed in a high-pitched voice with a sly grin.

And that tiny little voice inside her head...

She never heard it again.


	33. Chapter 33: ScatteredRain

Harley felt as though Dr. Jeremiah Arkham's oak desk made him loom over her like a judge ready to render a condemning verdict down upon her. Here she was, dressed in the familiar black trouser pants, loosely fitted white blouse, ballet flats, and beige cardigan she had worn every day before she met the Joker. She was drab without a spot of make-up on... plain, and uneventful. Her skin was gray with lack of sleep, and her hair was stringy and limp, darker then it had a week ago. She was blank, empty, fatigued, like a heavily used dish rag. There was nothing Arkham could say to her to further demoralize her.

Not to say he didn't try. "Hard to believe you've spent a whole week at home and you haven't managed to find the time to do some laundry." His feline smile spread across his face as he leaned over the desk slightly, flipping through the notes that she'd made on the Joker during her observation.

Arkham had taken her resignation very seriously, and had asked her in today to turn in her swipe key, security badge, and all other property belonging to Arkham Asylum, which included the Joker's file. She could tell he'd been looking forward to receiving it, seeing as he could formally claim the research as his own work. Perhaps he would write a book without so much of a mention of Harleen within its pages.

He could do whatever he wanted. She didn't give a damn.

And it wouldn't matter anyway.

"It really is a shame, you know?" Arkham asked, though Harley hadn't said a word as the old doctor launched into another of his passive-aggressive tirades. "We could have learned so much from him as a patient if you had just managed to control him better than you had." He flipped through a couple more pages of the report. "Instead, the judge has ordered that he be remanded to Blackgate tomorrow to await his criminal trial. I can imagine he's _very_ impressed with you at the moment."

And although it was clear that his tone was sarcastic, Harley took it in stride. Despite her obviously unassuming demeanor and physique, there was very little Arkham could do to break into her psyche now. "You're very possibly right, Dr. Arkham. Regardless of that, I was wondering if you would offer me a moment to apologize."

"Oh, there's no need to apologize to me..."

"To the Joker...you're right, I don't really feel compelled to apologize to you," she told him, so bluntly that his shocked face and stern neck shot back slightly. "I left him with the impression that I would be able to maintain his innocence on his behalf, but with my resignation... well, clearly that will not be the case." It was easy to see where she was coming from, even from Arkham's twisted mindset. Harley had spent six months with the man, had been his only advocate, his only confidant, and having left as abruptly as she had must have impacted him significantly.

But seeing such a thing requires a sympathetic heart - a distinctly absent characteristic in Dr. Arkham's personality. His heart knew no sympathy, no pity... it did, however, understand pride, and maybe that was what struck Arkham most of all. Harley had failed herself and wanted to rectify that failure by apologizing to the Joker.

It was more than he could ever hope to achieve.

His hands joined together as he rested his forearms very squarely on the top of his desk. "Harley, I understand your need for closure, I really do..." He let out a very fabricated sympathetic sigh. "But I simply cannot have you up there without my accompanying you, and I'm already late for a meeting. I was under the impression that you would hand in all of your badges to security, collect your belongings, and leave. Requesting to see me like this is highly unorthodox."

She knew it was, and didn't need a word by word explanation of the oddity from Arkham. Nonetheless, Harley didn't mind playing the fool, particularly in this instance. "I understand that Dr. Arkham," she said, nodding, "but certainly you can't spend six months putting every drop of faith you had into me, simply to dispose of it at the sight of my resignation." The old doctor seemed to be listening to her as she expressed her appeal, which was more then she'd honestly believed that she would get. "I simply want to explain to him the reasons surrounding my resignation, and apologize for my behavior. Certainly I could have acted with grace and integrity, but my professionalism has never come into question with the Joker. I brought myself close to him in order to understand him, and in understanding him, I learned a few very important facts about myself."

Not very far from the truth, and perhaps it would be enough to manipulate Arkham into giving her exactly what she wanted. After all, the Joker had taught her very well.

At last, she hung her head, a coy smile dancing upon her thin, plain lips. "I just wanted to say goodbye."

And if Harley had been religious, she would have claimed it had been the grace of God that came to her just then...but it was, in actuality, something far darker than that. Taking in a deep breath and pointing his eyes skyward, as if he were receiving some sign from the heavens above, he sighed that same sympathetic sigh and hesitantly nodded his head.

"Alright, alright... but there are guards up there, and I will have them notified that you are to be inside no longer than fifteen minutes." Arkham pointed at her with a skeletal, yet commanding indexing finger. "Any more than that, and I'll have security escort you from the premises. Do you understand?" he asked, demanding at least an eager nod of her head, which she offered up happily.

Standing, she continued to nod frantically, a smile of deepest gratitude painted upon her face. "Oh thank you, Dr. Arkham! I promise you that you will not regret such generosity."

And while she smiled and at him, and took his hand in a firm handshake, she reflected on that moment – over a year ago now – when she had said the exact same thing to him as he approved her internship. He had been a role model then. Harley had looked up to him, wishing to be even a shadow of a doctor in comparison to him. But somewhere along the line she had surpassed him, had become something so much more than he would ever be.

This final act of generosity would soon be a decision he would come to regret... though her smile, that perfect smile, didn't illustrate that in the least.

Quite the opposite. Arkham smiled back.

"Very well then," he said, nodding his head and collecting his things from the desk. "It's a shame we couldn't keep you. It's certainly been a pleasure working with you over the last year." He kept his tone nonchalant as he motioned her from the room as he himself moved off toward a meeting.

"Ah, the feeling has been mutual, Dr. Arkham." And as he passed through the office and down the hall, his back turning to her, she smiled a smile that the doctor hadn't seen. She smiled the Joker's smile, that he had so lovingly taught her.

* * *

"You have fifteen minutes, Dr. Quinzel," said the guard, but Dr. Quinzel didn't respond.

_Dr. Quinzel doesn't live here anymore._

She swiped her card key to the Joker's cell in solitary confinement, and pulled the heavy fireproof door open.

He lay on his bed as he always had in the past: the ankle of his right leg was perched atop his left knee, his right knee wobbling to-and-fro in rampant boredom – that was, until he saw her. Everything in the world seemed to stop then, and when she closed that door, he shot up to his feet, moving toward her with his arms out. There was something soft in his face, this look that, much like a dog's to their species-specific whistles, was a unique response to her, and her ability to perceive it.

Although she wanted, very badly, to reach out for him as well, she watched him from over her dark rimmed glasses, and held up a hand to stop him. Turning, she unlocked the small window covering from the wall and slammed it over the six-inch bared window that was carved into the door.

"What happened?" he asked her as soon as the key had turned to lock the covering in its place.

Harley hung her head, waiting for the seconds to tick by as she formulated an answer. She'd been asking herself that very question for the last week, and it hadn't been until now that the answer seemed to appear to her very plainly. Turning, she looked back at him. "You happened. You swept in like a hurricane and you crushed my world... my happy little bubble, which wasn't so much happy as it was everything else." She released the deep breath she had been holding.

"Just a bubble..." he murmured, and she nodded back.

"Just a bubble."

There was a moment of silence before Harley simulated using a pin to pop an invisible balloon, her pressed lips providing the high-pitched, explosive sound-effect that made the Joker smile. It coaxed a chuckle out of her as well. "I can't go back to the way things were before I knew you. I can't _unknow_ the things you've taught me... I can't forget. I can't let it go." Pausing long enough to take another breath, she ran her hands through her dark hair that sparkled ash-brown and synthetic in the neon light of the room. "So what do I do?" she asked, almost rhetorically, but then turned her attention to him as if she expected some kind of answer.

He choked on the words a moment before they escaped him. "You want _me_ to tell you what you should do? I don't even know what _I_ should do."

And here, where the atmosphere had been so drab, so melancholy... something lifted, and Harley's smile pressed over her mouth, indenting the two gentle dimples on the side of her cheeks. "I think you're going to find that you're going to have to give me a lot of direction in the very near future."

That was just vague enough to pique the Joker's curiosity, and he might have questioned her further, but she cut him off, lifting her shoulders and beginning to remove her lab coat, though in a very different tone as she had before. There was almost something teasing about the way one shoulder came off and then another, so much so that he held out his hands as if to stop her. "Here?"

She tilted her head down and watched him, one brow lifted curiously. Then she flipped her coat flat onto the table within the cell and scoffed at him. Sewn inside the back of her thin lab coat was a large pocket, which housed a relatively hefty file. "If Arkham had bothered to look a little closer at the file I had given him fifteen minutes ago," she explained to him, "he would have clearly noticed the differences between reality, and the elaborate piece of fiction that I handed back to him. This is your original file. It's been revamped and customized. Think of it as one of those pretty little Latino girls they use to get cocaine over the border." Her depiction was dark, and the Joker appeared pleased by it, his smile stretching out wide as he regarded the seemingly normal file.

But when she flipped it open, a sense of awe overtook his face. The sheer girth of the file was enough to house his green vest, checkered shirt, tie and woolen pants, which had all been neatly rolled to conserve on space. Also within the file was a set of new grease paints, glimmering in a thin glass case.

His usually narrowed eyes were the size of tea saucers. Thought it wasn't very shocking that she had access to them. Arkham Asylum would have had several articles of his clothing, seeing as he had returned _twice_ now, wearing them "Not exactly what I was expecting when you took off your lab coat."

"Get your mind out of the gutter, and get your ass in your suit," she told him abruptly, turning toward the door again. "You've got twenty minutes. Be ready."

* * *

"Dr. Arkham..." his vibrantly shaken young receptionist spoke into the receiver of the telephone, clenching the handle firmly in her left hand as she pressed it into her ear. "I have an urgent call from Mrs. Arkham that she's asked you could take in your office...yes sir, a private matter."

What a good little actress she'd been, as she continued her performance without stammering...though anyone might have been coerced into a terrific performance with the barrel of a magnum revolver pointed at their skull. And though she spoke directly to Arkham, her eyes couldn't remove themselves from those dark pockets of black that enveloped Harley's blue eyes, even as she slowly and calmly hung up the receiver.

"Ah!" Harley exclaimed. "Such a riveting performance. I really couldn't have done any better myself." The silvery barrel was still pointed at the young woman's head as Harley perched herself just along the edge of her desk, the sound of pleather creasing and squeaking as she crossed one leg over the other. "Though... it's not hard to do much better than you. I can't imagine you were selected based on upstanding and intense criteria. Let's face it, scheduling three-martini lunches with members of the board is very hard to fuck up."

The young woman shuddered, slowly pushing herself away from the edge of her desk and further toward the wall behind her. "Wh... what do you want?" she asked, but Harley didn't answer.

With her free hand, a tightly gloved set of fingers came up to brush a few hairs away from the blond fringe that danced along her forehead. "Ah, well... you know, I really do envy you. The way you live your life, willfully adhering to his every whim. What us women will do for a man, huh?" she asked, and then, almost achingly, she released this light, high-pitched, vibrating laugh that brought the young woman to explode into a full bout of nervous shivers. "They say obedience is the true badge of femininity. How you manage to portray the role in such believable circumstance is beyond me. Especially _you_! God... you really must have no soul at all to take orders from that man." Rolling her eyes high into her skull, Harley expressed, for what was perhaps the last time, her all-consuming disgust for Dr. Arkham.

But no matter how disgusted Harley might have been, the young secretary stood solid of her rank. With a deep breath, she leaned forward, giving her a disdainful glance. "Yeah, well..." she said slowly, "you gotta do what you gotta do."

"So insightful." Feigning shock and taking a cleansing breath, Harley scratched at her leather-covered scalp before reaching into a fitted groove carved into her outfit. From it, she withdrew a large silencer. Sucking her teeth, she screwed the thin apparatus onto the end of her gun. "You know, I'm always going to remember you."

The young woman, though visibly frightened, seemed openly resentful as well. She watched Harley as she would watch a heated speech from a corrupt and nonsensical politician. "Remember me? Why? Because I'm sooo insightful?" she hissed, like some cornered feral cat.

Scoffing and shaking her head, Harley looked over the gun once more, before pointing it directly at the young woman. "No, no, no... don't give yourself so much credit!" she exclaimed. "No, I'm going to remember you the way all women remember their firsts...and seeing as I'm so devoid of the atypical morals of your average female, you're going to be the first in a very _long_ line of unfortunate souls." Harley purred the words, and though the action was small and quick, it left an indentation on her as well.

Though nothing like the indentation that the bullet left in the pretty young girl's head.

While she felt the kickback from the silenced gun ride her arm, she watched as the secretary slumped back in her seat. The blood had not gushed like she expected it to, but instead flowed down her face and over her body, the way a waterfall suddenly summits over a blockade of ice.

She had to hurry now. Harley whipped out a cellphone, and dialed Dr. Arkham's direct line. Placing herself on hold, she stuffed the young woman underneath the desk, pushing the chair in to conceal her corpse, but not before removing the handkerchief from the breast pocket of the secretary's jacket, using it to mop up the blood that had smeared along the back of the chair.

Easing the lighting in the front lobby to conceal the pool of blood that would eventually develop, Harley threw open the doors of Arkham's office, and closed them behind her. The place had been left dark, the thick curtains preventing the night sky from flooding the room with its starlight. The room was thickly shadowed, all black, save for the green study light that beamed its soft glow upon the Joker's file, still laid across the desk.

Turning to the large window, she shrouded herself in the thick curtain and lay in wait.

She didn't have to wait very long.

There was a sense of urgency that came over her when Arkham opened the door – always and out of habit closing the door behind him. He rushed to his phone, and she heard his chair wheel itself away from the desk as he moved to pick up the phone.

"Marjorie?" he asked into the receiver, but the line had gone dead. "Hello? Hello, Marjorie?" he asked again, but the voice that responded to him was far more haunting than that of his complacent, boring, sex-starved wife.

"If I was your wife, I wouldn't want to talk to you either." Harley sighed contently as she pushed the curtain aside and flipped the cellphone shut, tossing it onto the floor.

The expression he turned up to her was the one she had been aching to see on his face. There he sat in his chair, his graying brows lifted, his mouth hanging agape, and his eyes... those putrid eyes of his now resonated and hummed with fear. It was finally the shade of respect she had been looking for, and only now did she command it from him, when before he had never listened.

"Who... who are you?" he asked, and though she felt some validation to know how complete her transformation was, there was a part of her heart that sank when he didn't recognize her. Though somewhere, deep down, he had to have known it was her.

Tilting her head down, and turning her eyes to look up at him, she lifted her left brow, which did little more than greatly expand the dark, cat's-eye shadow beneath it. "Don't tell me I went through that trouble today, wearing that wig, wearing those drab close... I was in here only thirty minutes ago!" She gestured to the chair she'd been sitting in just a while before. "C'mon, Arkham...you know it's me."

"H...Harley?" he asked in disbelief.

"The name's Harleyquinn, now," she instructed, spinning her right hand in concentric circles. "I think it has a pretty good ring to it, wouldn't you say?" Harley asked in a light-hearted tone, though it wasn't as though she expected an answer. Upon hearing her introduction, the old man moved to push himself away from his desk, taking a shivering, petrified breath as he did.

She immediately whipped the gun out from the holster built into a spot at the small of her back. "Don't move, old man. I've been looking forward to this, and I really wouldn't prefer to end it prematurely... Though it does seem a same to have to shoot you point blank this way. I spent the better part of my week off at gun ranges, learning to aim at moving targets... and _not _doing laundry." she spat at him in response to his little quip to her earlier.

He froze, even though Harley could tell that he sorely wanted to run. Stunned, he sat in the wheeling chair, his eyes taking in the shape of her form. Beyond the window behind her, the clouds of that day's rain were blowing away, the light from the indigo night sky flooding in to where she stood. Harleyquinn stood significantly than her predecessor, the high heels having been abandoned by something that would allow for grace in acrobatic movement. Small, black leather flats seemed to bleed into the black and red argyle catsuit that maneuvered its way up her body like a snake gliding over the surface of a river. Her hands were partially covered by a set of black fingergloves, which masked her fingerprints and palm from what would be the prying eyes of the GCPD.

But the most striking feature by far was what led the tour-de-force of her appearance – the space above her shoulders. A brilliantly white collar accentuated her collarbone and crane-like neck, and above it, a shocking, well-crafted jester's headdress surrounded a face of porcelain skin and heavily shadowed eyes, as dark and deep as a cat's as it prowls, ready to pounce upon its trapped prey.

"What do you want?" he whispered breathlessly, although the trivial nature of the question irking her.

Taking a few slow steps toward his desk, she perched on it, much like she had just a few moments ago on the young secretary's desk. "Well, I came here so that you and I could have a little chat. Figure a few things out," she explained, crinkling her nose in this seemingly simple request.

Arkham visibly swallowed the lump growing in his throat. "Like what?"

Brandishing her gun almost carelessly, she waved it about as she spoke, and Arkham's eyes followed it very closely. "For one, I need to know how a man like you gets into this line of work. I mean, hell, it didn't really take much to prove that you were twice as crazy as half the patients in this place of yours, particularly when you manage to torture all the patients so effectively... and what with that long history of mental illness in your family that you fail to mention to any of your staff..."

That appeared to both surprise and displease him at once; though those eyebrows remained high upon his forehead, his mouth appeared to shrink into an unnerved scowl.

"Ahh... didn't think I'd do my homework on you, did ya?" she asked, chuckling softly. "That was the thing with you, Arkham, you always thought if they work for you..." Here she paused and leaned forward, picking a little piece of lint off his tie. "...then they _must_ be dumber then you."

Arkham took ahold of Harley's wrist with a surprisingly aggressive grip, pulling her in closer to him, growling at her viciously. "Who do you think you are? The Joker's apprentice? He doesn't give a _shit_ about you!"

Within a second, Arkham found the silencer of that recently fired gun up against his temple. She hadn't flinched at his aggression. She had expected it, maybe even welcomed it.

"Oh, and you do?" she asked, eyes wide with curiosity. "Let me tell you something that I've learned over the last few months. It's that men like you, trying to convince themselves and the rest of the world that they're doing something..." Searching for the word, she pulled her wrist away from Arkham and stood up from the edge of the desk, pacing slightly as she kept the gun trained on him. "_Noble_! They hide their intentions under the rug of well-being...as if to say, '_Hey everyone! Look at me! Aren't I such a great guy? Look at all the good things I do!' _While all that time, lurking under the surface, is that selfless good deed you've been waiting so long to cash in."

He exploded in anger, attempting in vain to convince her of his innocence - innocence she knew didn't exist. "I stay here day and night for these people! I don't sleep, I don't eat, I haven't tasted fresh air in weeks because of these people!"

"_Buuuull_shit, Mama! You don't eat because food lost its taste years ago. Only money satisfies your palate now. You don't sleep because your back is too sore from carrying around that thick wallet in your back pocket all day. And you don't taste fresh air because you'd rather be in here paying for a life you never live – to buy books you'll never read – all so your wife can take her boyfriend out to a nice restaurant." Harley's rant was so heated that he slammed himself up against the bookcase to escape its blaze, but it didn't work.

Pulling the gun down and away from him, she scowled at him and shook her head. "I used to think that men like you existed in this world because they chose to make a difference. Now I see you for what you really are..." She sighed, almost sadly. "You're just a lonely old man, with no life outside these walls."

There was a long silence. Then, emerging out of the dark like a runaway freight train in the distance, was the deep guttural sound of his chuckling, rising from his stomach to vibrate in the back of his throat. "Be serious, Harley...you know just as well as I do that this place is a prison to all those who enter here – patients and doctors alike. The patients? They're the lucky ones. They stay locked inside their cells... but us doctors? We get locked inside ourselves!" he said, beating his tiny, withered hand against his chest.

"How can you say that? You _chose_ to be here!" she hollered back at him.

That withered hand closed into a fist, and came down to connect with the surface of his desk. "I _hate_ these people!"

"Why?" she shot back, her voice returning to the softness it had once been. "You hold such animosity toward these people, and I'll never understand _why_. You're a doctor. You had endless opportunities for good, to make your life count for something!" she told him passionately, her face faltering from anger to a deep-seated sadness, before returning to her rage. "But instead, you chose to line your pockets, and skim off the top, and torture, and torment those who needed your help, your genius..." Her voice dropped into a dramatic monotone, as she read more deeply into Arkham than she had read into anyone in her entire life. "And you wanted, so badly, to be crazy... but you aren't, and you never will be. You can never excuse your actions...just like I'll never be able to excuse mine."

Trembling back in his chair, the old man remained stone-faced as he stared down the barrel of that gun. "You're insane..." he growled.

"No... I'm not, just like you." Taking a delicate step forward, Harley watched as he attempted to push himself further into the wall behind him, to no avail. "And just like you... I'll never taste fresh air, or see the sun. This world is a prison to me... created by men like you. I can only pray that, one day...I'll be rid of these men who paint themselves as false idols of patron sainthood, when they should be so marked as the devil," she whispered, her tightly wrapped thighs pressing against the edge of his desk, no more than five feet from the old man.

"Please, Doctor..." Harley pleaded, pulling the hammer back on her gun. "Don't hold any of your animosity toward me."

Once again swallowing the lump in his throat, Arkham's eyes peered up to her once more. "May I ask a question?"

"Final request?" she asked, the smile spreading on her face.

Drawing a shuddering, splintered breath, Dr. Jeremiah Arkham asked, "What was the weather like today?"

The smile that had pulled across her face softened, and was replaced by a solemn understanding that sat plainly, and wistfully on her face. "Scattered rain..." she whispered, and pulled the trigger.

Blood splattered like ruby raindrops on the bookshelves behind him, marking all his untouched classics with the sorrowful presence of a life lived for all the wrong reasons. The old doctor released his last breath, and the sorrow that Harley felt escaped with it, leaving behind a wash of relief and true euphoria that made itself known in the form of hot tears that stung at her face and pulled the blackness that surrounded her eyes into two tar-stained rivers on her cheeks.

But it was no use to cry for Arkham, or happiness, or anything else.

Because the night was long, and it was far from over.


	34. Chapter 34: AssBackwards

There was a moment - a split second of sheer terror, while she walked in almost slow motion from Arkham's leather-scented office, past the slowly advancing blood stain that came out from under the receptionist's desk in the front lobby. There was a moment of moral hesitation.

_Oh God, Harley... what have you done? _

But really, what could she say? She had enjoyed it. She had been filled with a current of shivering electricity when Arkham's terrified and yet defiant red-headed receptionist had gushed blood. She had reveled in a moment of personal victory when the slug himself, Jeremiah Arkham, was no more. Harley had smiled when she saw his lifeless body slump in his leather chair, a man never again to read the weather report and dream about the feeling of the air on his skin. His evil dreams had ended.

Hers had just begun.

As she slowly made her way down the large ballroom staircase that led away from the offices and to the main floor below, Harleyquinn's arrival caused quite the scene. The hefty, donut-filled, rent-a-cop guards at the front entrance turned to make their way over toward where she stood, out of sheer curiosity. A couple of nurses in the station right by her former office lifted their heads just above the window ledges to peer at her with a mix of shock and bewilderment. _Who is this strange creature? _their faces appeared to ask..

And then they didn't need to ask anymore.

Without another moment's hesitation, and before the guards had a chance to utter a single word, Harleyquinn pulled her Magnum from the holster at the small of her back and fired off at them, striking both in the chest. Taking them out first had been more than mere convenience. Nurses at Arkham weren't armed, and so when they attempted to barricade the door with their body weight, it took only a single slam against it with her shoulder to keep the door from closing, holding the barrel of the gun firmly in place.

Hearing their screams and gasps of terror seemed to drive her to smash her side into the door again with astonishing strength. It snapped open on its hinges, sending two women in their pristine white uniforms to the floor, and leaving a third clutching the receiver in her hand and attempting to dial 911 as quickly as her shaking fingers would allow her.

Snickering to herself, Harley made quick work of aiming and pulling the trigger, one bullet for each of them. The woman on the phone was struck first in the chest, and she seemed to spring from her swivel chair, collapsing onto the floor in a twitching heap. The other two were awarded a quicker end, and Harleyquinn quivered with hilarity upon seeing the blood from behind their skulls explode into jagged halos on the stone tile floor.

There was something almost angelic about that.

She enjoyed it so much that she put another halo on the floor with a shot right between the eyes of the nurse who had desperately been trying to call the police. It would have been cruel to leave the poor thing there to bleed out in pain, after all.

Pressing her index finger down on the archaic receiver button on the telephone just to give herself some piece of mind, she inspected her handiwork, taking the few seconds of silence she had to place a speedloader in the cylinder of her revolver and then snapping it closed. Glancing up from her gun and back toward the door, she smiled brightly at the men who now stood there, two guards dumbstruck by the scene before them.

One little clown standing in a sea of dead bodies. Harleyquinn had to laugh... It must have really been something to see.

"Geez, I'm sorry boys!" she called out to them in an unrecognizable high-pitched tone. "You look a little shocked that I started without you!" she said excitedly, as if overly pleased to see them.

But while they must have expected her to raise her gun to send them running for cover, she sprang into a different action. She took a few long, bounding leaps toward them before jumping up to grab ahold of the door frame, swinging her body with mighty force. Each foot collided into the chest of the each of the pudgy guards, sending them careening into the floor much as the nurses had just a second ago.

The sound of more footsteps blazing down the hall ahead would usually have caused her to panic, but her reaction was eerily calm. She removed a billy club from one guard as she used her free hand to shoot him in the head, and without pause moved the arm which now held tightly onto the shaft of the billy club to bludgeon the other furiously against the side of the head. It didn't take more than a couple swings and the splatter of blood after them to tell her that he was injured enough to be included on her current count.

Nine...and that number was about to go up.

To give herself a tactical advantage, Harley took off into a stairwell, her flat, leather-bound feet clamoring up the stairs to the second, and then the third floor, all the while hearing those chasing feet coming up behind her. Pushing open the door to the third floor, she moved halfway up the cement steps to the fourth, and then lay in wait. It was a dynamic little plan. The men would come hurtling up the stairs and hear only the sound of the metal clasp opening. They would move through the doorway to pursue her, and... well...

Watching as two guards and an orderly came through the slowly closing door, believing that it was where Harleyquinn had made her escape, she sprang. Her gunfire struck two in the back, and one in the head just as he was turning in shock and terror to witness her nifty little ambush.

It wasn't as though they couldn't figure out exactly who she was...they had to know she wasn't as much of a raving lunatic as she might have seemed. After all... she was a lunatic with a doctorate. That education had to count for something.

Still clenching onto the billy club with one hand and lowering the shiny metal Magnum with the other, she exhaled almost casually and looked up the remaining stairs that would take her up to and beyond the fourth floor. The stairs meandered their way upwards toward the sky, or the seventh floor, whichever came to her first. They both felt like the same milestone. She took no time to appreciate her sudden, dark accomplishments, taking the stairs two by two, hoping that they wouldn't have the time to lock the stairwell doors on her; they had a penchant of doing so if an erratic patient had attempted an escape.

Rounding the stairs to the fifth floor, there was a feeling of panic that rang through her head as the alarm began to sound – a repetitive wailing that caused Harleyquinn to clamor up the stairs on all fours, and she managed to throw open the door to the sixth floor just as the heavy bolt of the lock came down to trap whatever evil that snaked skyward in a vertical prison until the authorities arrived. Without a doubt, they were already on their way.

She needed to act fast. That wouldn't be much of a problem at this point; Harley knew that this alarm would send the staff at Arkham promptly leaving the building, and usually by this time in the evening, most of the doctors were tucked safe and sound in their expensive beds. The ones that remained were usually a few night shift nurses, anywhere between ten to twelve guards (six of whom she'd already killed), and a few orderlies to assist in administering emergency medication. They remained until morning, and considering the wages at which they were paid, Harley knew damn well that it wasn't enough to put themselves in the line of fire.

The unfortunate souls that she had come across thus far had had probably been investigating, thinking that there was a patient loose. It was so much more than anything they could have imagined, and she was sure that once they had seen the mess she'd made in the front lobby, the call was placed in to put the asylum on lockdown, and to get the remaining employees to move their asses out of the building.

However, Harley had found herself a floor short of her destination. She'd managed to escape the lock mechanisms in the stairwell, but she was on the sixth floor, the Joker still lingering above her, probably impatiently pacing back and forth, waiting for whatever surprise Harleyquinn planned on springing on him. She found herself in much the same predicament as a caged bird. So little seemed to separate her from her freedom.

But then, if she couldn't get herself out of this mess, then she didn't deserve one ounce of that freedom.

Glancing around the the corridor and up above her head, Harleyquinn sought the answer to the question that floated predominantly through her mind – _How the hell am I going to get out of here?_ She gazed down the hall before taking off around the corner. Maneuvering through Arkham was difficult when the place was on lockdown; no one could get in, though it was certainly easy to get out. As a safety precaution, and to assist the evacuation of any faculty, the old fire escapes on the side of the building usually remained open, though it was impossible to open them from the outside. The doors lacked outside handles, key holes, or any sort of way to grip the door to open in on its hinge.

Harley could escape through them, make her way down to the car that waited in Arkham's back alley, and leave without the Joker... but the thought was so nauseating that Harley fought back the urge to violently vomit.

The panic was beginning to get to her. With the alarm sounding, it wouldn't be more than just a few moments before the police were drumming their way up the stairs, coming to condemn her, and if they got her, they got the Joker...

And that was certainly not the way this was supposed to end.

After glancing down at the billy club she held in her hand, she did a double take as she noticed the woodgrain, which had captured some of the blood that had splashed on her. The black stain that had been placed over it gave one the impression that it was identical to that of a police officer's. Though, Arkham was so cheap that there was no way in hell he would pay full price if a cheaper alternative was available, even if it was incredibly below industry standard. Still... it gave her an idea.

As Harley ran down the corridor and toward the fire escape at the very end, she pushed open the handle and carefully listened for the sound of approaching sirens. Thankfully, there was nothing yet, only the rush of the night air as it swept between the buildings and wrapped around the asylum's tight brick corners. Stepping out into the rusted platform of the fire escape, she took a firm hold of the billy club, striking it hard against the frame of the open door.

Nothing.

Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she looked down at the baton, and then to the metal clasp on the door. Using her back to keep the door open, the club held up over her head, she brought it down in a large swing with such strength that her elbow ached afterward, but she accomplished her objective. The wooden billy club had splintered, leaving a fine edge like that of a crowbar.

Smiling down at the broken baton, she moved like lightning up the rickety stairs and to the seventh floor's fire escape, holding the splintered club in one hand and keeping the magnum at the ready in the other. It seemed too much to expect that there would not be someone, or a group of someones waiting for her behind this door. But when she managed to pry the wood into the tiny gap between the door and the frame to pop it open on its hinges, standing behind it was only the sound of the wailing alarm – and the sturdy legs of a former friend.

Molly stood before her, indignant. Her arms were crossed over her chest, only twenty or so feet away from the fire escape. "You didn't think I was just going to let you come up the elevator and whisk him away, now did you?" the young nurse asked.

Harleyquinn had to look at her twice. Was she out of her mind? She had to have been told that someone was coming up for the Joker, and before anyone else had assumed her identity underneath her leather headdress, Molly must have made the positive identification. She'd known it was her. Who else would risk life and limb for this man other than Harley? But still, regardless as to what Harley had done, Molly stood there, blatantly in her way, fearless in the face of fear itself. She'd taken the lives of so many tonight. Would she hesitate to take another?

That was a question she was having a hard time answering.

But there was a slow, boiling contempt for Molly brewing in the pit of her stomach. She'd come so far and accomplished so much, and this girl still thought that she had enough to stand up to her. Harley was so much more than what Molly's superficial tutelage would have eventually turned her into...some latte-swilling, designer-wearing, bad-date-getting social monstrosity. Molly lived in a world where ignorance was bliss... and that wasn't the world Harley was interested in anymore.

"Well..." Harley started, tossing away the broken baton and feigning a scrutinizing glance at her gloved fingernails, "I was kind of hoping you would, so I could mow you down. You might not be the brightest crayon in the box, but I'd hoped you'd be able to figure at least that out," Harleyquinn finished, in a tone that was significantly meaner and darker than Harley had ever been.

Molly didn't flinch. She just stood in her way, staring into her as if there was something more to the girl then her shallow existence. She tried to egg Harleyquinn on. "Killing guards and orderlies you don't know doesn't count. You really want to be a killer? Why don't you take a shot at me?"

Without another thought, Harley pointed the revolver directly at her head and pulled back the hammer. "You've just proven my point. If you'd been smart enough to look around before you ran up here to lock the doors on me, then you would have known that even though I had no problem getting the guards and nurses out of my way... nameless people with faceless bodies...there was great pomp and circumstance when I fired a bullet through the brain of Jeremiah Arkham."

Molly's face fell, and Harleyquinn released the most amazing, echoing laugh, which rippled through the bricks of the asylum like rattling keys on a piano. "You honestly think I'm going to have a problem killing you, Molly? You really think you mean more to me than him?" she asked, slapping her thigh at the girl's naivete. "Why the hell would you think that?"

"Harley," she called out, begging for the girl within to hear her pleas. "You've never been happier than when you stood there wearing that dress. You're never been more confident than when you and I took the day off to just be ourselves." She was trying so hard to reason with Harley emotionally, but Harley wasn't _here right now..._

_You can leave a message at the beep. _

Taking a few solid steps toward the girl, she was shocked when Molly didn't turn to run off in the opposite direction, standing her ground instead. "You think wearing a dress and drinking a glass of wine with you is the extent of who I am?" she asked through clenched teeth, coming up so close to the girl that now there was no other reaction she could have taken other than to back away in anxiety. "Wine and designer dresses. Does that encapsulate me? Is that everything that I am?" She tapped the barrel of the gun against the tawny dark skin of Molly's delicate temple.

"No, Harley, but..." she started, but Harley didn't care anymore.

"No, that's what _you_ are. You're happy? Sure you are, why wouldn't you be? With your nightclubs, and your boyfriends, and your expensive clothes, and your pretty makeup, and your luxurious weave...every single bit of you is made out of plastics, and fabrics...you're like a real life Barbie doll..."

As Harley went on and on, she could see Molly beginning to succumb to the ridicule from the raving leather-clad woman who had been her friend. She was on a judgmental rampage, and knew that she was managing to hit all the right buttons. Suddenly, the life that seemed to give Molly all that candy-covered, saccharine confidence that she walked around with was the very thing Harleyquinn was using now to bring her down into a million tiny pieces.

"I found something beyond material possessions. I found myself in the midst of people like you, trying to push me toward some kind of eternal path to shallow, superficial emptiness..." she whispered, watching and following when Molly shuffled a few steps further down the hallway.

"And you know what I've done to those who've stood in the way of that, tonight?"

Silence hung in between them – Harleyquinn's dark features twisted into a scowl, while Molly stared back at her, wide eyes holding an innocent, intense shock that pierced through the leather, through the darkness, and into the girl she'd once known.

Inside herself, Harley could feel her heart soften into the soft, warm, waxy mass that it had been before, free of the jaded armor that it had been recently dipped into, coated and darkened like a candied apple. But Molly's look had everything in it... regret, sadness, surprise, and shock. She was everyone's collective argument, everyone from Jim Gordon, to Bruce Wayne, hell... maybe even to her mother or her father, begging her not to do what she was about to do.

Begging her to forget about the Joker... a lost man in a lost mind.

"Harley..." Molly's tiny voice called out to her, pleadingly, "don't do this..."

But the way the Joker had looked at her when he came to her apartment, with his face lit up in moonlight and the neon glow from the window, had asked him to come with her... that sense of adventure and intrigue that had nearly pushed her to disappear into the night with him... the way he had seemed sore to leave, hesitating before he went...

He wanted to give her his vision of the world. And really... what else had she asked for over the last six months, but the chance to see the world through his eyes?

She couldn't let that go.

And where in her heart there had been a battle between Harley's good intentions and the Joker's streak of painful truths, there now came a point where both aspects stood on the same side of the line she'd drawn through her heart. One side remained of sound mind, the other... remained with the Joker.

It was too late to turn back now.

And then the gun went off.

Molly was thrown back several feet, and she collided painfully with the floor, bouncing once before leaving a red streak where she slid to a stop. Harley had shot her in the shoulder. Not enough to kill her, but certainly enough to get her out of the way.

Lowering the gun, she watched as the woman squirmed in pain and shock for a moment before realizing what kind of exit wound the bullet must have left. Molly lay on the floor, bleeding at an alarming rate, a pool of dark red gathering around her shoulders. She groaned, and as her upper body writhed, a strange snow angel effect brushed across the dusty tile floor.

Moving to stand over her, Harley looked down at the injured girl, almost apologetically. Perhaps with a smaller caliber, Molly might have lived, but that didn't seem like a possibility now. It would have been too cold-hearted for even Harley to simply shoot her dead...try as she might, saying goodbye to the places she knew, throwing her keys and her phone into the river...nothing had been as hard as watching Molly die now. And nothing else might have been so disconnecting.

She coughed blood, and Harley knelt in the spreading pool beside her shoulder. There must have been a softness in her face, because when Molly's eyes opened into tired, twinkling slivers, she smiled as much as she could.

Finally, after a labored breath, she asked, "You love him, don't you?"

Harley had opened her mouth to rebuke her, but Molly just smiled a bloody smile, coughing laughter. "Oh well... not too much you can do about that..."

If there was one thing that Molly had never done, it was judge her... she'd stated concern, of course, but she'd never judged Harley. And now she'd never get the chance to.

"I tried understanding you... but everything about you...seemed so ass-backwards," she whispered quietly to Harley, still kneeling in her friend's blood, seeming to listen attentively to the dying young woman. "How someone as smart as you, could seem so... sad, so insecure."

Harley's big blue eyes burned as tears stung them, but her pride held them there.

"Maybe you will figure him out... maybe this is how you're going to do it. Ass-backwards, just like everything else..." Molly's voice faded, her eyes closed, and her body seemed to relax as the pool of blood Harley had been leaning in spread so large that it spanned the width of the hallway.

"Molly..." she called out, but Molly didn't answer.

Harley took a sharp, awakening breath of air and rose to her feet, leaving bloody footprints behind her. Slowly, she made her way to the Joker's cell. There was something melancholy in the atmosphere now. She had expected to burst into the room with all the splendor of a Roman Emperor, but now she only gazed down the hall to Molly's lifeless body, jarred by the painful reminder that there was no time to hesitate.

Swiping her still active cardkey over the lock to the Joker's cell, the door clicked, and came unlocked. Throwing the door open, it slammed upon its hinges. The blood still tracking in after her, she looked over to where he sat on the bed, clad in everything but his long violet frock coat. His elbows rested on his knees, and the fingers of his grease painted hands intertwined with one another as he waited.

Slowly, the Joker turned to glance up at her. Over the flat leather shoes, up her long, tightly-bound pleather calves, and over the black and red argyle pattern of the suit. He stood as his eyes traveled over the arches of the headdress before moving back to her face. He said nothing, but his eyes were as wide as they had been that night ten days ago, when she'd kicked him in his ass after he'd broken into her apartment.

She took her headdress by one of its arched points and pulled it up and off of her head, a thick cascade of blond hair spilling from out of it. Smiling, she winked at him. "You had said you thought I'd look better as a blond?" she asked, a mischievous air in her voice, and suddenly, Molly's corpse was a million miles behind her.

"Yeah...the hair color is not my biggest concern," he muttered, with a gaping maw and darkly-rimmed, tea saucer-shaped eyes.

Shaking her head, Harley reached out and took a firm hold of his wrist, as the sirens from outside finally came into earshot. "Yeah, it's not mine either." she said, grinning as she pulled him out of the room, both of them hurrying toward the fire escape.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

Ok guys! That was it. Part One is complete, and Part Two will commence on November 1st, at 7:30AM EST. I gotta say, considering all the great response I've received, I'm a little sad to have to take a break. Considering I've been writing nonstop for the last six months, I need to give my brain ample "recharge" time to come up with some super great material.

Part Two promises to be ever more dramatic, action packed, and romantic than part one, so get yourself ready, because in a month's time, I'll be back with all new explosive chapters.

Again, I can not tell you how much I appreciate the reviews, and now much all of my readers mean to me. If you've never believed that you could dedicate yourself to a project of this magnitude, I'm here to tell you that you CAN. I've had several people tell me that they respect me as a writer because I keep myself organized and maintain a consistent schedule. I find that the ONLY reason I'm able to is because all of you continue to read. Without you, my motivation, and essentially this story would not exist.

Thank you!

Please keep in mind that if you see any chapter updates over the next month, it's probably just me going in and tweaking things, but as for this weekend? I'm off to my family's cottage for a nice relaxing Autumn weekend.

I hope to talk to you all again soon.

Thank you some much for reading. You have my eternal gratitude.

-Shanghai.


	35. Chapter 35: Molotov

**NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: **_I'm Baaaack. ^_~! I can't tell you how much I missed you all, but also, how much a break was truly needed. Seems like the month just flew by, but nearer to the end, just seemed to drag on forever. _

_Now, before we get all this started again, I just want to make something clear. Recently there have been some issues in my life that have left me a little distracted and unbalanced. I'm trying really hard to maintain something of a writing schedule, but it's difficult with so much going on in my head. I'm going to keep posting a chapter a week, but I may need to take weeks off in between if things worsen. _

_Nothing to be worried about! I'm so happy to be posting this chapter for you, and know that I have so much in store that I could never stop writing this story. _

_Enjoy!_

How had it all come to this?

The Joker wondered that as the two of them hurried down the rickety fire escape of the Asylum. They had traipsed in bloody footprints all the way to the door, and though the Joker had tried to skip delicately around the massive pool of blood that had collected around the fresh corpse of the dark-skinned nurse, Harley had pulled him down the hallway so quickly that he hadn't had the chance to avoid it.

There was no point, anyway. The girl must have been a bleeder, since the pool nearly stretched from one wall to the other. He'd noticed, though, that Harley didn't flinch, didn't pause or hesitate in the slightest as they ran past her. Although the deed had clearly been her doing, there was no remorse. Not right now, anyway.

The Joker didn't know much about psychology, but he did know a bit about human nature. In life, some people focus, while others freak out. You put just a little bit of pressure on someone, and their true colors really shine. You see people for who they truly are. Harley was very obviously one of those special kinds of people who focus in periods of extreme stress, and nothing could be more stressful than an escape from Arkham Asylum.

"So, what do you call this get-up of yours?" he asked her, as she all but pulled him down the rusted metal stairs by the tight grip she had on his wrist. While he moved quickly enough to follow after her, his mouth seemed to move just as readily. "I mean, I knew you were going to do something, but this reads a little too much like a page out of _my_ book, don'cha think?"

No immediate response came. The soundtrack to their daring escape rattled around them, a symphony joined by the aching wail of police sirens. They grew closer and closer as the two of them reached the bottom stairwell, an archaic, mechanical ladder waiting for them there.

It didn't take a professional eye to see that the place wasn't up to code. You can't expect a place made entirely of concrete to burn to the ground so easily. In fact, they probably could have renamed the fire escapes to "loony escapes" and gotten more use out of them if a particular patient had suddenly gone apeshit.

Maybe then they would have maintained them properly.

This might have placed a thorn in the side of what was so far a genius plan, seeing as the bottom of the ladder was still a good fifteen feet from the street below. But without missing a beat (and still without a single reply), Harley released his wrist, and slid down the edges of the rusty ladder, using her body weight to send the rickety steps tumbling from their lock and coming much closer to the ground. So close, in fact, that Harley's own feet had less than half a foot to cover before they made contact with the ground. It was certainly enough to make his escape more comfortable, and that must have been why she had done it...

Perhaps that was what caused that look of shock to wash over his face when she turned her electric blue eyes up to him.

"Well, are you coming?" she chimed.

His haste in following her suggested an obedient reply. The Joker dusted himself off as she came down to ground level again, and if he had the time he would have dropped to his knees and kissed the ground. Before he could catch his breath, though, Harley was pulling a cardboard-hued protective tarp away from a relatively bland-looking vehicle. It was a little, black hatch-back with small tires and tinted windows.

"You wanna outrun the cops in this piece of shit?" he asked her.

But when he leaned over to take a look at the dual exhaust, he heard her scoff, and she threw back a shock of platinum blond hair, her well-sculpted fringe fanning out in the gentle night air. "You really do think I'm a moron, don't you?" she asked him, shaking her head. "You'd think you would have figured out by now: I do my research. They stopped production on this car in 2007. In fact, there were only 55 sold in the United States. They took it off the market because..." She unlocked the car door on her side, pulling out another handgun and an old, short-barreled shotgun that looked like it had seen substantial wear and tear over its lifetime. "...the manufacturer was trying to compete with high-end German brands. They ended up making the car too powerful."

As she handed the shotgun to him, the Joker found himself caught in a whirlwind of casual explanation. "Zero to sixty in three-point-nine seconds. That's faster than the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor... and it can maintain its maximum speed for a longer period of time," she told him, heavily placing a box of shotgun shells into his hand.

A moment ago, he couldn't get her to say a damn thing. Now she was schooling him on the acceleration rates of illegal street cars.

"Now," she went on, walking over to the driver's side of the car and gesturing to the other side. "Seeing as how you're probably a better shot than me, you're riding shotgun...no pun intended."

The sirens were closing in on the pair fast, so he hurried over to the passenger seat, sliding in beside her as she pushed the key in the ignition. He turned in the seat to face the back of the vehicle, his back pressed up against the dashboard and his legs straddling the passenger's seat. "So...?"

"So what?"

"So what do you call this get-up of yours?" he asked once again, his red smile widening as his eyes pored over the more subdued features of her face that so adequately mirrored his own.

She shifted the gear to first, then drove them silent and blind out of the alleyway, her headlights off so as to avoid detection. Turning to him, she smiled her broad, toothy white smile, thick red lips framing the perfection that she knew encapsulated him. "Aw... c'mon Puddin'. You telling you can't guess?"

"Oh, I can guess..." he purred back in a low rumble.

That massive smile turned into a mischievous grin as she pulled out onto the main road, threw on her high-beams, and double-clutched into third gear. "Well then, keep guessing, baby... and hold on to your hat," she cooed, before sending him lurching toward the seat as the engine roared and took off in the direction of a nearby bridge.

As the car's tires sped over the road, the Joker pulled three of the twenty-gauge shotgun rounds from the box she'd handed him. He pushed two into the magazine, a soft spring-loaded _click_ echoing from the gun, then chambered a round and pulled the long, sliding forearm handle toward himself. He ran a glance over the gun, caught a little off guard by how smoothly it handled. "Say, where did you get this thing anyway?"

She got that unyielding grin of hers again, turning the small car into the Narrows. "That old thing? Heh..." Her grin slimmed into a knowing smile. "On my week off, I paid my mother a little visit, but she was out playing bridge with her friends, like she is every Tuesday..."

"Why would you visit her if you knew she'd be playing brid... ahh..." He was impressed, and it echoed in the dark chuckle from the back of his throat. The Joker didn't know much about her family life, but he knew enough to know that these weapons had most likely belonged to her incarcerated father. Her naively devoted mother had probably kept them around the house for purely sentimental reasons.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

But regardless, he had to give her credit where it was due. The daring and bloody rescue, the smooth and dashing escape, the exact research and acquired firearms – she'd done more, _far_ more, than he would have ever expected from any regular henchman. But this girl was not a criminal, and yet here she was, exhibiting one of the finest criminal minds he'd ever seen. If heroes were made, and not born, then maybe the same went for villains as well.

From a few hundred meters behind the speeding black hatch-back, Joker could see familiar, swirling blue and red lights turn the corner after them. They marched single-file between the jagged, garbage-lined alleyways of the Narrows. "So, I'm your lookout, is that right?" he asked her casually, watching the lights inch closer.

Lifting her light brown eyebrows, she looked back to her rear-view mirror and watched as the squad cars approached the them. "I suppose you could call yourself that. Though I wouldn't say you're playing second fiddle or anything." When he turned to look over at her, she was still smiling, her darkly rimmed eyes darting from the road in front of her to his face. "Go get 'em, tiger," she said with a wink, thumbing toward the backseat.

The thrill of a car chase must have been lost on the population of the Narrows. None of those who dwelled in the shabby houses to their sides came out to see the commotion as the sirens wailed out into the misty, late night streets. Counting the buildings between their car, and the screaming police cars in the distance, the Joker turned to glance over his shoulder to his ambitious new chauffeur. "Slow down a little, would ya?" he growled to her, with only enough exasperation to get her to bat her thick black eyelashes in bewilderment. "They're not in range."

Harley seemed to understand, and compressed the brake, slowing the car down enough to bring the police cruisers behind them within range of his shotgun. Smiling, he relished the familiar feeling of the butt of the gun pressing into his shoulder, the way the recoil pushed him back ever so slightly as he blew out of the back window of the car for a clearer view.

"Hey watch out!" Harley called out to him from behind the steering wheel, and although her tone was chiding, he could practically hear the smile still plastered to her lips. "This is a _rental_!"

The two of them shared a cackling laugh before he nudged her to slow down another touch, bringing them just a couple hundred meters from the police. He kept himself low and out of sight from the police as they wrapped around a smooth corner and up a small embankment. "Let me know when you have a decent straightaway, would ya?"

Nodding, Harley's gloved hand wrapped around the head of the shifter and pulled the car into second gear, the rear bumper easily drifting around a hairpin turn as they made their was up a steeper hill. The car purred as it downshifted once more. Watching as the cops wrapped themselves around that hairpin turn, the Joker leaned over the back seat, the stock of the gun pressed firmly into his right shoulder, firing a couple rounds around the tires of the vehicles as they struggled to catch up. One of them had foolishly swerved to escape the blast, but the maneuver stopped short of success when the cruiser slammed through a dry-brick wall of some crummy residence, sending a cloud of dust and chalky shrapnel flying out into the street.

The sound of the Joker's high-pitched, adrenalized laughter echoed through the car as he pushed a couple more rounds into the magazine. "One down, one to go."

"I wouldn't expect it to be quite that easy," Harleyquinn said from the driver's seat, in a kind of weary sing-song that made the Joker twist around and look out the windshield to the scene before them.

Anyone with a clear understanding of the Narrows would understand exactly why such an escape was so daring in the first place. Arkham Asylum was located on an island in the mouth of the Sprang River, and to the east, on the same island, was a place which greatly resembled the slums of Sao Paulo, the Narrows. Here, Gotham's most impoverished people mingled with its seedy underbelly to create one of the most (if not _the_ most) dangerous neighborhood in America. There were always reporters from esteemed publications providing reports on the place as if it were some war-torn, decimated third-world country.

But the Narrows was only a symptom. Crime was Gotham's illness, and if it could be cured, then the Narrows would surely shrink, or disappear all together. For the most part, though, the city didn't care. If the hooligans wanted to share land with the crazies, it was all for the better. Particularly on this span of land, because unlike criminals in most other parts of the world, here they could be corralled. Ten years ago, the city of Gotham had installed a series of ten drawbridges to surround the island to cut off transportation to and from the darkest places in the city.

Those bridges were the police's strategy of apprehending the nouveau Bonnie and Clyde, and the expression on the Joker's face turned sour when he saw the bridge slowly begin to lift off its hinges. And they were still several hundred meters away.

"Shit..." Joker muttered under his breath.

But the girl in the other seat said nothing. Quite the contrary – she smiled, the same twisted smile he used to wear when he was just about to get the better of someone.

"Remember what I said about zero-to-sixty in under four seconds?"

Without warning, she flung the car right into its fifth gear, her left foot double-clutching as the engine roared past the developing barricade. Uniformed police officers tried to rush after the car on foot as it made its way up the ramped bridge, easily sailing over what was sure to be a ten foot gap. There was a surreal moment of anti-gravity as the two of them flew through the air, in which the Joker almost believed the lightning-fast little rollerskate of a car would sprout wings and sail through the skyscrapers that lined the adjacent side of the Sprang River. Instead, it landed with a hard _thud_ on the other side of the bridge, the back bumper scraping into sparks as it landed.

Just as the two had huffed a sigh of relief, there came _another_ car screaming after them. Without gearing down, Harleyquinn gnashed her teeth in frustration, twisting the rear view mirror to place her hardened gaze upon the driver and its passenger. Her face dropped.

The driver wasn't familiar to her, but the man in the passenger seat – in his taupe trenchcoat, and darkly-rimmed glasses, speaking angrily into a police radio – was Jim Gordon, obviously expecting that the two would have made the bridge.

The Joker seemed pleased when he saw who it was, though, and he braced the shotgun to his shoulder and aimed a shot. She turned to glance at him over her shoulder, and he grinned mischievously at her, his eyes turning back to stare down the barrel of the gun, preparing his shot into the face of the Commissioner.

Without thinking, she veered hard to the left, disappearing into an alleyway and throwing the Joker from his perch in the back seat, hard up against the right side of the vehicle. When he had regained his bearings, he twisted toward her and shot her a nasty glare.

"Are you out of your mind?" he spat at her, as she weaved through the narrow alleyway and into an adjacent, nearly empty street.

"Listen, I've got one condition though all this," she told him, far more forcefully and directly than he was expecting to hear from her. "Clearly, at this point, I'm not one to preach a neat and clear moral existence, but if you didn't plan on shooting me in the head immediately after I finish helping you escape then I'd appreciate it if you _didn't kill Jim Gordon_."

The little rant caught him off guard, and he gazed at her, his spine pressing up against the back of the passenger seat as he considered the idiocy that she had just asked of him. After a moment or so, that surprise bled into a knowing smile as he wagged a gloved finger at her. "Oh-ho-ho...someone have some Daddy issues?" he asked with his deep, rumbling chuckle.

Her dark eyes shot him the same harsh stare he had offered her a second ago, before she had to turn her attention back to the road in front of her. "What are you going on about?"

"You know..." he started, "it's not as easy as putting on a costume and make-up. If you did this thinking that you were going to be able to go back to your cookie-cutter life one day..." The Joker paused, his hand dancing through the air to the tone of his sing-song melody. "...then you're in _waaaay_ over your head."

With her eyebrows furrowed, a firm, almost daunting look carved onto those normally tiny and delicate features, she turned the car sharply to the right again, pulling up on the emergency break to brought the car to drift with its back end out into a perfect arch, before tearing off down another alleyway.

The Joker pulled himself off the wall of the vehicle again, groaning at her in exasperation as he did. "You think I don't know that?" she asked, swerving around a dumpster with just inches to spare on her right side. "I know what I've gotten myself into, and I know there's no going back, and in time my condition might change, but for now, I'm asking you... pretty please with sugar on top...don't shoot Jim Gordon."

Her tone was layered thick with cynicism, but where one might expect that he would turn the shotgun on her for addressing him in such a way, the Joker looked at her with a silent understanding. He sat there, reflecting for a moment as the cool night air rushed in though the gaping, jagged-edged window in the truck of the hatchback. At the beginning, letting go of everything had been difficult, and although there hadn't been much, he remembered those early days. He could clearly recall how strange it had been to know, without a shadow of doubt, that you were completely alone.

But she wasn't, and now neither was he.

When he didn't respond, she turned to look at him again. The Joker made his way into the front passenger seat again and buckled himself in. There was a moment of silence when he removed the live shells from the magazine and placed them back into the box, but as soon as the topic had come up, it had passed. Twisting the rear view mirror, the Joker's black eyes scanned the scenery behind them. Jim's car seemed to have disappeared behind them, as the small, beaten car flew through the nearly empty streets, far ahead of their pursuers.

The Joker gazed around the area, looking out through the passenger window at the buildings as they changed from skyscrapers to low-rise buildings of dark red brick. "Okay, we're getting close enough," he said, turning around to look through the windshield. He appeared contemplative for a moment before looking himself over, peering through all sides of the vehicle and looking high above the windshield to see if they had pursuers oat any angle.

"We need to ditch the car," he told her.

"Ditch the car?" she asked, frustrated. "Where you want to leave it, at the side of the road somewhere?"

"You got a better plan, then?"

"It just doesn't seem like you to ditch a car," she said, the car slowly weaving into the oncoming lanes, and though they were empty, the Joker still held a worried expression. Their pace had come down quite a bit since Jim had lost their trail, but she was still moving quickly enough to kill the two of them in a head-on collision.

"What did you have in mind?" he asked unenthusiastically.

"Well, I'm sure you know just as well as I do that the simple minds of the GCPD just can't help but have their attention captured by a big, sparkling object," she said, hitting the brakes to and gearing down into second.

He slowly got the gist of her vague explanation, and tightened his seatbelt to brace himself. He held fast onto the sides of his seat. The car geared down once more, and taking one last glance at the speedometer, the Joker noticed that she were still doing about thirty miles an hour as Harley slammed the car into the corner of a bakery that had been closed for the evening.

It was the middle of the night, and while the crash had caused a commotion, the only difference in the landscape that the Joker noticed as he opened his eyes was that a few lights in the apartments above the bakery had been turned on in response to the clamor. His vision was foggy for a few seconds after the crash, and Harley's head reeled back into the headrest of her seat as she stretched out a kink in her neck.

"Hmph..." she groaned, reaching a hand up to message her shoulder. "That wasn't so bad."

She hoisted herself out of the broken driver's side window, once she discovered her door was jammed shut, while he threw open the door and moved out into the chilly, windy night. He watched Harleyquinn, straight-faced and focused as she quickly threw open the trunk. A few bits of shattered windowglass decorated the inside like a disco ball, reflecting the few lights that came in from the street. Taking up a jerry can of gasoline from inside the trunk she began hosing the rest of the vehicle down with the yellow-tinted liquid, tossing a healthy dosage into the back seat through a broken window. She tossed the can in after it was empty.

Shotgun in hand, the Joker turned back to her, mildly amused as she immediately reached up to his neck to remove his tie. "You've really had all this planned right from the start, haven't you?" he asked, lifting his chin to allow her to undo the tightened Windsor knot. "Not that I'm not interested, but I don't really know if _now's_ the right time for you to be doing that..."

"Don't flatter yourself," she told him immediately, offering up a small grin as his tie loosened and slid out from under his collar. "You know damn well what I'm doing."

He did, and it was just another reason he was impressed with her strategy for this evening's little outing. The sound of sirens faded into the distance as Harleyquinn stuffed one end of his tie into the gas tank of the car, leaving the thinner end hanging outside the tank. He may not have been much of a drinker, but it didn't matter much, since Molotov cocktails _were_ his favorite cocktails, and she had effectively turned the vehicle into one giant bomb with a silk tie fuse.

Like a smoker caught without a light, she patted her sides down, then found what she was looking for. She reached into a small opening at the small of her back and produced a metal zippo lighter, which she used to light the end of the tie. Hurriedly, she came back to her full height and took ahold of his wrist. The two of them rushed into an alleyway across the street, the fire crawling up the tie, licking up the broken windows of the car.

Flashing lights from far away cast an eerie nightclub atmosphere over the dark streets of eastern Gotham. The Joker tugged back on her to slow down so they could watch, and as the two of them dipped into the alleyway, they turned to look back as the car exploded into a fireball, large enough for the two to feel the heat on their faces and the shockwave pulse through their bodies from several meters away.

Looking back to him, she motioned him further down the alleyway. "I sure hope you know where you're going from here... because from this point on you're leading."

The thought of having to lead her around wasn't exactly appetizing, but he tried to collect his geographical bearings anyway. "Hmph...this is St. James, isn't it?" he asked her, though he'd already realized that it was by the time she nodded her affirmative. It was late, and they had to get themselves situated and organized before the early morning newscasts alerted the public of their harrowing escape. A past hideout of his wasn't far from here, and being as close to North Gotham and Crime Alley as they were, the Joker knew that within a quarter-hour they could be in one of his many safe houses, but they were surrounded by police, and navigating the back alleys of the city was going to take him a bit of thought.

"Alright..." he growled, motioning for her to follow him. "But I walk fast, so keep up."

"Have I given you any reason to believe that I can't?"


	36. Chapter 36: Web

Once the car burst into flames, Jim knew it was no use...

He had lost them.

The night was heavy on Jim Gordon, and the soles of his leather dress shoes fell wearily on the old oak stairs of Arkham Asylum's massive ballroom staircase. It hadn't been a long while since he'd last been here, and internally, he wished that the time between his visits had been significantly longer. Tonight the place was crawling with police officers, investigators, detectives, and forensics, and all the while the press was held at bay by the same emotionally shattered guards who had been called in to give their statements and fill in shifts for their viciously slain brethren.

Jim went on his way up the stairs and down the hallway, flanked on both sides by the executive offices of Arkham Asylum's leading doctors. At the end of the corridor, the last door stood open. A few investigators were just leaving the room, still scribbling furiously upon their tattered notepads. As Jim passed, he noted the somber, sullen look on their faces, and it made him want to walk just a little bit slower, just to put off the inevitable, just to avoid learning the truth that he already knew.

In his heart of hearts, he was certain of the culprit, and he could feel the heat welling behind his eyes as he prepared himself for the revelation.

_Please God,_ Jim prayed internally, _please let it be anyone but her._

Slowly, he made his way through the door, glancing at the pooling bloodstain that had crept out from under the receptionist's desk. Her death had been merely a crime of pure necessity, as there was no way anyone could hold a vendetta against someone as empty-headed as she had been. Jim had remembered coming to meet with Arkham for investigations in the past, and not long into a brief and polite conversation with the girl had easily realized that the old doctor had clearly hired her out of convenience. She didn't _have_ a psyche for him to decipher.

Not that he would have bothered anyway.

They were wrapping her up in a black body bag, as Jim moved toward the sound of a flickering camera taking pictures of the crime scene beyond the double oak doors of what had been Jeremiah Arkham's office.

"Good evening, Commissioner," one of the forensics investigators in the room ahead greeted him as he entered. His voice was bereaved, and he offered Jim a box of packaged latex gloves.

Jim glanced around the room, memorizing the utter tragedy of what he saw. "No. No, it's not."

The place did not seem out of the ordinary, save for Arkham's lifeless body slumped over in his Italian leather swivel chair. A few books from the bookself behind him were now strewn out on the floor around him, their pages and covers spattered with dried blood.

Jim had to admit to himself that what made him sad was not seeing Jeremiah Arkham sitting dead in his chair, a hole between his brows and a ghastly exit wound that had turned the back of his skull into a bloody crater. It didn't even make him sad to see this debauched and discredited facility without its leader, as surely there would be some other old, unethical man to replace him.

What made him sad was the passion with which this murder had been engineered.

After a moment, Jim's internal detective sprang into action. Arkham must have been out of the office, and so the receptionist was used to garner his attention and bring him back. She was then killed and quickly hidden under the desk before the killer laid in wait within the darkness of Arkham's office. A very simple game of bait and hook. Jim bent down to examine the execution-style shot between the eyes, and concluded it had been made with a high-powered round. Had to have been a Magnum, at the very least.

Rising to his full height yet again, hands stuffing in the pockets of his taupe trenchcoat, Jim looked down at Arkham's bloody corpse with only a melancholy half-smile. "Well, my friend..." he muttered, "it couldn't have happened to a better person."

"Commissioner, you might want to come here and take a look at this."

Jim turned to see the forensics investigator crouched on the opposite side of the room, pointing with the eraser side of his pencil to a small square object on the floor. As he took a few steps closer, it became clear to him that it was nothing more than a cheap prepaid cell phone. "We found this earlier, sir," the young man said, "but didn't want to move it until you or your team had a look."

Jim bent down, with no visible enthusiasm, to pick up the phone with his gloved hand, using his thumb nail to flip open the cover. The phone was standard, completely generic, inexpensive, and held absolutely no personal information. It had only ever placed one call – Jim recognized it as Jeremiah Arkham's direct office number, which had clearly been used to lure the doctor to his death. The inside was smeared with foundation and held a light scent of perfume, and it slowly affixed the killer's identity in his mind.

The young investigator was certainly enthused with the sight, though. "Did you want me to swab that for DNA?" he asked, eyes wide at the microbial treasure trove that Jim held in his latex coated hand.

"Go for it..." Jim told him, a deadness in his tone lingering over the words like a dark cloud. "It won't matter much anyway." But the kid didn't care, he just wanted to do his job. He swabbed the phone, and sealed both the phone and the swab in separate Ziploc bags.

Another investigator entered the room only seconds later, an open file resting in his hands. "Gordon, I ran the plates on that car you chased down St. James a minute ago."

"And?"

The investigator flipped through a couple pages, coming over to show Jim a lease from a car rental dealership downtown. "The Saab was rented by a Mrs. Vanessa Ferguson, with a credit card that was reported missing only yesterday afternoon. Pretty easy to track down, considering that there were less than a hundred sold across the country. We got people trying to contact the kid that leased it to her."

Again, it only deepened the dark conviction that lurked in Jim's mind. "Anything else?" he asked somberly.

"Yeah, they got the security tapes up," the investigator said gruffly. Before anyone could so much as bat another eyelash, Jim rushed past him, bolted back down the hallway of which he had just come, and took the stairs two-by-two, directed by other police officers to the security station toward the end of the hallway on the first floor.

The place was packed. Everyone squirmed and huddled around the monitors, straining to see the carnage that this murderer had wreaked upon all these defenseless nurses and oblivious guards. Jim pushed his way to the front, gazing down at the tiny thirteen-inch monitor they were rolling the feed on.

Watching in the corner as the seconds rolled by, the technician spoke. "Here she comes..."

Some gasped, others gazed on in horror, but Jim came as close as wanting to cry as he ever had.

Off from the right side of the screen came a darkly silhouetted figure, with a strange devil-horned headdress and dark eyes. Jim immediately recognized it as the court jester on the Joker card... and the image sent a wave of terror down his spine. He watched as the figure sent two guards to the ground, having swung into them off screen, each one of her tiny feet she planted in their chests appearing in the corner of the monitor. Then she shot the one on the right in the head, smoothly leaning over to take his baton from his belt loop, and swung over to bludgeon the head of the other guard until his death.

Most people looked away then, but Jim couldn't. The shock of blond hair that stood out from her bangs, the blackness that swallowed the pixelated blue eyes, the blood red lips, the sweetness in her twisted smile. In his mind's eye, she looked very much like the fifteen-year old girl who'd opened the door for him that day, and whose heart broke behind those sad young eyes of hers as her tiny world crashing down around her. He could see it in the way she winked mischievously up at the security camera, after having just committed one of the most violent crimes he'd ever seen.

"That's her..." Jim whispered, hitting the pause button on the archaic VCR, the frame freezing on her malevolent, devilish, beautiful face. "That's Harleen Quinzel."

# # # # # # #

Back in Arkham's office, Jim stood vigil over the heart of carnage that had settled into the Asylum that night. The Asylum was already closely associated with violence, so it seemed only suiting that it had finally turned into a murder scene. Jim and his colleagues had investigated crimes here before, but nothing of this magnitude.

Thirteen murders, and Gotham's most dangerous criminal let off the leash again.

Though the video had made it clear that the Joker was not to blame for any of the killings, there was something so malicious about the way these people had been killed. How could the Joker have passed his torch to a woman of completely sound mind in just six months, with only the power of suggestion?

Now, as the seconds paced around him at an achingly slow circumference, the ticking of his wristwatch seeming to echo in his ears, Jim's eyes fell upon the printout he held in his hand – a much smoother image from the video he had just watched. There was so much wrong with this photograph, something so dark that he had never even seen a whisper of in Harley. Her pretty face stood out so vividly in the photograph as she winked to the camera, her back turned on the two dead guards that she had left beside each other. One of them was apparently seizing from the severe head trauma she had dealt him. Unlike the Joker, the makeup she wore was smoothly applied; her face was pale, and fresh, but not white, and her lips were bold and red, the petals of a tulip in a world of beige. Her hair was a mix of precious metals, silver and gold, like spider's silk struck by morning light.

But above everything else, it was the eyes that transfixed him so.

They looked like a glistening pool of blue ocean water in the middle of a freshly paved parking lot. Jim had stared down the Joker a couple times before, and his features reminded him of melted, folded candle wax. His eyes in particular were like black spider-legs tucked into the crevasses dug by squinting, skeptical, curious glances. Harley's could have come down a runway in Paris. The smoky blacks and silvers covered the space around her eyes and arched up her brow, where it tapered off to a point in a dramatic cat's-eye.

As Jim sat there, gaze fixed on her face, there came a draft that pulled him from his mental meanderings and brought him to look up to the rustling curtain in front of the open window. Furrowing his eyebrows from behind his thickly-rimmed glasses, he stood from where he leaned against Arkham's desk and moved to close the large window.

He didn't have to wonder who had opened it for very long; as soon as he turned around, a shadow emerged from the darkness of the room.

Normally, Jim would have jumped to have been greeted in such a way, but he had expected to see or at least hear from the Caped Crusader tonight. "I figured you'd be around at some point... seeing as this has something to do with the Joker. Is it on the news yet?"

"Not yet, but by morning Gotham will be hearing about it," Batman said in his usual gruff tone. He made little fanfare about his sudden appearance, like always. Batman was never one for grand entrances, let alone grand exits.

Jim tugged at the corner of the photograph in his hand, reluctant to hand it over to the shadow-draped man. "Well, I'm not sure how much you know, but I have to assume it's more than me."

Batman's cape swirled around his ankles as he examined the room. Arkham's body had been moved from the scene just minutes ago, along with most of the evidence - the blood spattered books, the drenched swivel chair, and the prepaid cell phone. He was later than he usually was. You could set a watch to time how soon Batman would show up at a crime scene, and it was usually only seconds after Gordon had.

"I should know more than I do so far..." Batman seemed to be taking note of the gunshot residue on the desk, already tagged by the CSI team. "Harley remained elusive last week... low-key," he said flatly, a dark but dignified presence as he moved about the room.

And although what Batman had just said felt like the final nail in the coffin, Jim didn't find it hard to believe that he had known as soon as he'd heard, too. Once he'd gotten the call tonight, Jim had seen it coming a mile away as easily as a freight train through a wheat field. "I know," he said. "I called her last week...she never called me back."

He had been devastated, waiting by the phone for a call from Harley that would never come. Secretly, Jim had hoped that no one in Gotham would ever discover the truth about Harvey Dent. The Joker had taken the broken mind of a broken man, who had lost everything that ever meant anything to him, and turned him into a psychotic murderer. But Dent hadn't exactly been having the best day, to say the least – he was in a weakened mental state, and the Joker took advantage of that. Harley, on the other hand, had been better than she'd ever been. Her confidence was at an all-time high after receiving the internship at Arkham, and even after she'd been asked to treat the Joker.

Batman turned his gaze back over to the Commissioner. "She's not exactly easy for me to track."

"Are you joking? And here I was thinking that you were the kind of guy to know everything." His lip curled in disbelief as he thought that over a moment. Batman could discover just about anything... he could tell you how many shipments of drug stuffed teddy-bears had been unloaded from pier nine in the last three weeks, or he could tell you how many times during any given period that Carmine Falcone had stood up to take a leak... but he couldn't track Harley Quinzel? She had a public address, her number in the phone book, and in recent weeks there had been countless articles published about her personal life – and now, somehow, she'd eluded Batman?

Jim couldn't believe it until his mind had stumbled onto a thought - but as with most ideas, they just ended up leading to more questions. The Commissioner tip-toed around the subject delicately. "You really think that Harley would have been capable of something like this?"

Using some kind of tool from his belt, Batman scraped a small amount of the gunshot residue into a plastic test tube, sliding it into an elastic holder in his belt. "It's not hard to imagine a world where all people are capable of things like this."

"But what do you think of Harley?"

There was a thick silence that hung between them, and Jim knew exactly why. Anyone who knew Harley would not think her capable of such an act as this, and admitting that he didn't believe that she was capable would outline one very important fact.

"You _know_ her... don't you?" Jim asked, solemnly – and then watched as, for the first time he had ever seen, Batman turned his ice-cold gaze away.

He'd hit the nail on the head. When the truth was assumed, it was only the guilty who fought back. Without thinking, Jim extended the picture to the Caped Crusader, waving it him to recapture his attention. Batman looked down at it, his features hardening again, but then settled just as quickly.

"Well, whether you knew her or not," Jim said, "throw out everything you thought you knew. I've known her since she was fifteen years old, and I never would have assumed she could do anything like this."

There was something paternal in the way he thought about this girl, Jim realized. Ethically, he knew it wasn't right, she had been a civilian caught up in the shuffle of crime, and he'd taken to her somehow... watched her grow and change. During her first couple semesters at school, she'd used to call him with her grades, and he always came away proud that this girl, who could have easily succumbed to a life of crime as her father had, instead decided to turn around and make something of herself. But now, to see this oddly-shaped monster lurking just below the surface... it made him ill.

"What are you going to do?" Batman asked.

Jim just shook his head, hands planted firmly on his hips, pondering any potential positive outcome. It was impossible. What could he possibly do for her now? The girl had thrown her life away. "I don't know...stop her, I guess, before more people die."

"What makes you think the Joker will let us get anywhere near her?" Batman asked, passing the photograph back to Jim and slowly making his way back over to the window.

With his brows furrowed, Jim's curious glance moved from the photograph and back up to where he was standing in the rustic orange light cast from the small reading lamp on Arkham's desk. "Does the Joker really seem like the kind of guy to take a partner?" he asked, turning the photograph to show it to Batman once more. "I don't care how ambitious Harley is, if this is her attempt to capture his attention, then I think she's going to be pretty disappointed."

"This is what the Joker's been waiting for this whole time. He's found care and sympathy in Dr. Quinzel, and he intends on keeping it," Batman said.

But the idea that that Joker would thrive off emotions like that didn't make any sense to Jim. He shook his head at the photograph.. "I don't understand why she would give him sympathy."

"Neither you or I will be able to understand it, but we both know something about the size of her heart. She understands things in people, and she's seen things in the Joker that no one else may ever see." He paused for a moment, and Jim's eyes flashed up to meet his once again.

"It's funny, isn't it?" Jim sniffled in the damp night air, rubbing the side of his nose with his index finger. "She knows something about all of us, and we hardly know anything about her."

"That's what makes her so dangerous."

"I know..." Jim whispered. "I think that's what breaks my heart most of all."


	37. Chapter 37: Gambol's

With a crash, the Joker's foot sent the door flying on its hinges, spinning and slamming into the wall behind it. Dust swirled through the air and whipped in tiny circles over the floor, the early morning light from outside dancing through the sparkling dirt. It was a small place, and obviously hadn't been used in a good long time, so Harley was shocked when the lights came on without a fuss. It was clear that the place had been paid for, but left undisturbed, for exactly the purpose it was being used for at just this instance:

A temporary hideaway, hidden from the radar of aggressive pursuers.

Shivering as she walked in, she found the place entirely empty, which was probably the way the Joker liked it. It was a bar, albeit a small one, with pool tables in the back, booths running along one side, a large empty space in the middle, and bar stools lining the left side of the room. A neon sign over the bar read _Gambol's_, but Harley didn't recognize the name.

"What is this place?" she asked as her eyes took everything in.

The Joker had already walked behind the bar and was opening various bottles, sniffing the contents within, seemingly oblivious from the danger they had just faced.

The walk here hadn't been long, but they were constantly surrounded with the sound of police sirens, and the sun threatened to rise at any moment and give both of them away. In the thrill of everything that had happened, Harley hadn't begun to feel the cold until well after her heart had stopped thumping in her chest. But in just his vest, dress shirt, and pants, the Joker hadn't allowed the weather to affect him. The Joker had such an intimate knowledge of Gotham's underbelly and alleyways that Harley couldn't help to think of him as some well-weathered old ship captain.

Ahab, perhaps... he was just as bitter and vengeful, and grew a little more irritable every time a new siren chimed into the symphony.

Finally, they'd come up under a bridge in Gotham's northernmost district, a couple blocks north of Crime Alley but still about ten blocks away from Amusement Mile. The bar was very small and unassuming, and Harley wouldn't have paid it any mind at all if she had found himself in the area – which of course she would have never been. But once they were inside he seemed to relax, uninterested in anything that didn't have to do with the bottle of cheap whiskey he was now holding.

She asked again, "What is this place?"

"What do you mean?" he asked back, vaguely confused by her question.

"I mean, is this like..." She paused only long enough to depict the propensity of her thought. "...like, your secret hideout, or something?"

Before she'd fully finished the question, he looked up at her with a kind of cheap cynicism that wore off just as quickly as it had appeared. Pulling two rocks glasses off the shelving over the bar, he placed them down on its hard marble surface.

"Look...listen to me, alright?" he asked, and she turned her attention to him from where she stood at the door. Waving her in closer, he motioned her onto one of the bar stools. "All that crap I fed you about heroes and villains? Pffft!" He blew a raspberry and thumbed toward the shuttered window. "Forget about it, okay? The only two things that separate heroes and villains are their _perspectives,_ and how well those perspectives are accepted by society." He raised his brows, flashing his dark eyes at her in a way that brought a soothing heat to her cold cheeks.

"Wha... what do you mean?" she asked in a quiet stutter, as he sloppily poured a shot of whiskey into each glass.

Placing the bottle down on the bar he looked up at her, unimpressed with that question. "What do you mean, what do I mean?" He sighed. "You think I consider myself the bad guy?"

"No." she said plainly in answer to him.

"Do you consider yourself one?"

"No!"

"But you've done some pretty terrible things, haven't you?"

Ah, and there was the rub. She _had_ done terrible things, and within those few seconds the night flooded back into her mind. Harley didn't even like the sight of blood, and certainly had never been responsible for drawing it from anyone for any other reason other than purely medical. Yet the memories of herself shooting innocent women and bludgeoning a man savagely to death filled her brain. She had killed so many to save just one.

But while the trauma of the situation was just beginning to rear its ugly head, it was quickly followed by the realization that she'd do it again if she had to.

Those tears of hers dried up before he had the chance to make fun of her.

"The only people who consider you a villain are _your_ villains. So if you're both villains, than who's the hero?" he asked her plainly, placing an old-school rotary phone on the bar. Using his teeth, he slid his hand out of his violet leather glove before his fingers spun out several digits in sequence. He sandwiched the receiver between his ear and shoulder, free hand sliding one of the whiskeys toward her.

"Neither," she answered, looking down into the deep amber liquid in front of her

"Or both, depending on how you look at it. Heya, Bosco!" the Joker chimed out, as clearly someone had picked up on the other end of the line. "Yeah, don't you watch the news? I know nobody who watches the news as much as I do." There was another pause, and his eyes darted over to her in the way one does when a present party is mentioned in conversation, "Well, my therapist tells me I'm a narcissist. Maybe that's why I watch it so much."

Harley's demure smile crossed over her mouth before she pulled her eyes back to the whiskey that he'd just poured for her. The Joker's casual tone was something she longed to hear from him. He always sounded so deviantly scripted, as though she was just another in a long line of women seduced by his twisted mind. Here he was, now, just talking into the phone as if to someone he hadn't spoken to in years. He was by no means overly friendly, though - their banter was casual, but the Joker still held an authoritative streak in his voice as he quickly turned away from idle conversation, and back to the task at hand.

"Listen, do me a favor. I need you to call a few of the guys. I have some errands that need running." There was a pause, and he nodded as the person on the other end of the line pleased him with a suggestion. "Yeah, yeah...fine. Just a second." Turning his attention back to Harley for a moment he covered the mouthpeice with his gloved hand and leaned toward her to ask, "Hey, you weren't smart enough to stash some of your stuff somewhere, were you?"

Her expression lifted as he spoke. "Uh... yeah. I rented out a storage locker up on North Eastgate," she said, but he only reached under the bar and provided her with a paper and pen, motioning for her to write the address down.

"Yeah, I'm going to send you to pick up a couple things. And get the Tahoe out of storage," he barked, nodding his head as he watched Harley scrawl the address of the storage down on the small piece of unlined note paper he had given her. As soon as she had finished writing down the closest intersection, he snatched the paper out from under the pen she'd been using, leaving a bright blue streak streaming off the last letter.

He held the paper up and away from his face. When he had done this previously in the asylum, Harley believed he was just trying to get a rise out her, but there was something more genuine about his actions now that he wasn't obligated to indulge her. "Yeah, 1585 North Eastgate Avenue, locker number 97. Clear it out, bring everything with you, and hurry up. I think she rented the car we crashed under the same name. The bacon will catch on sooner than later." The Joker grunted a couple more times into the telephone, then hung up the heavy handset on the thick plaster receiver.

"Who's Bosco?" Harley asked him, with relative unease as she swirled her index finger around the lip of her glass.

"Bosco..." He took off his other glove before placing her hands at the small of his back, arching out his tightened spine. "...is a nobody. I pay him some money, he keeps his mouth shut."

Harley curled her lip in disbelief, arching a brow high on her forehead as she contemplated the devotion of someone the Joker wrote off as nothing more than a drone. "Well, if he's no one important, then why wouldn't he turn every bit of information he had on you over to the cops for immunity or something?"

The idea made him roll his eyes as he caged his hand over the top of his drink, picking it up and moving it over to where he stood a few feet away. "Someone's been watching too many courtroom dramas," he chided. "Firstly, prosecutors don't hand out immunity like ice cream on a hot day, alright? It makes them look like a bunch of pussies.

"Secondly, why do you think I come back to these guys? I might not be the 'villain', but I'm definitely a criminal, and you know why?" he asked her, and obediently, she shook her head. "_Becaaaaause_," he hissed, "there's a code of ethics scrawled on the underbelly of this city, and rule number one is 'No Snitchin'. It's like a brotherhood. Only the toughest of the tough survive on Crime Alley in this town."

A coy grin pressed over her lips, and she looked down toward her feet as if to play off the suggestion of her thoughts. "I guess that makes you pretty tough then, huh?"

He shot back his own version of a coy smile, which was really more of a noxious smile. Chuckling, he was about to raise the glass to his lips before he noticed the way she was staring back at him, with what was either disgust or a kind of awestruck curiosity.

"What?" he asked, turning to look back at the mirrored wall behind him, checking his face for any kind of distracting impurity.

"It's hardly six o'clock in the morning, and you want me to shoot whiskey?" she asked, at which point he turned back around with a wicked smile plastered on his face.

"Six o'clock? This isn't any regular ol' six o'clock!" He leaned over to speak with her more intimately, whispering in his gruff, unnerving tone. "This is the most important morning of your life. The first day that you were really, truly free of any plan that anyone else had ever made for you." There was a pause as his eyes shifted down to look at her glass that sat between them. "Besides, why would I have poured it if I didn't want you to drink it?"

Her darks eyes studied his face when he pulled up close, but he backed away just as quickly, examining the bar in a very animated way before casually prodding, "Unless that is... you _can't_ shoot whiskey. I understand..."

"Here's mud in your eye." She toasted his glass, which still sat squarely on the bar in front of her, before easily throwing back the shot and slamming the heavy-bottomed glass upside down.

With a tight grin, he lifted his glass toward her slightly. "It's... well, I guess it's Saturday now. To our sweethearts and wives."

"May they never meet," Harley said, and made him laugh so suddenly that he had to cover his mouth with the back of his hand, his gloved fingers barely holding onto the small glass and his black eyes the size of saucers.

She smiled back, winking at him. He choked out a laugh once he'd swallowed. "Good thing it didn't come out your nose, that would have been painful," she quipped, as he tilted the half-full bottle toward her in offering. "No, no... I know it's five o'clock somewhere... especially seeing as I haven't slept in about three days now." She watched him place down his glass as he placed it down, a last amber dollop dancing and smearing itself around the bottom. "If I have any more, I might end up being even more useless than I've already been."

"Three days? Even I sleep more than that," Joker remarked as he pulled a remote control from the bar, pointing it over to an old tube television in the corner and switching it on. Walking around the bar, he perched himself on the stool beside her.

"Nerves... just..." She took a large breath and sighed heavily. "Just nerves, I guess."

Leaning his elbows up against the bar, he motioned for her to hand over her glass, which he refilled and handed over to her. "Well then do me a favor, would ya? I don't like drinking alone."

She scoffed as he filled her glass up to the brim, twice as high as it had been before. "I find it difficult to believe that you have a hard time doing anything alone."

"Mm, you'd think so, wouldn't you?" He gestured up to the television screen. "I wouldn't exactly call you the best judge right now, though. For one, you haven't slept in three days, and for two..." He thumbed the volume up on the television. "You call _that_ useless?"

Up on the screen was helicopter footage of the early-morning police chase through the streets of Gotham City. The arching, leaning buildings of the Narrows made it difficult to see anything at first, but within a few seconds of the footage beginning, Harley saw their tiny car burst free of the clutter and race away from the wailing of numerous cop cars.

She looked on, dumbstruck. Had she been using her rearview mirror, she might have known that there had been nearly ten police cars racing tafter their speeding street car. But instead, she appeared to have driven expertly through the tightly cramped streets and up the bridge, sparks flying away from the back of the vehicle, the rest of the cavalry screeching to a halt behind them as engineers the size of ants scrambled to lower the bridge again.

"I did that?" Harley asked in shock, her monstrous eyes gazing up at the scene as though it was a car chase cut from a professional action film. The way the car weaved into alleyways, utterly disappearing from the sight of the helicopter...

Though she couldn't yet turn away, she could hear the sound of the liquor sloshing around the bottle as he swilled it. "Doesn't seem so useless, now does it?" he asked.

She didn't respond, as the channel cut to a newscaster behind a desk talking into the camera, a still of their burning wreck in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

"Police believe that the two fled on foot once the vehicle lost control and crashed into the side of the Millworth Bakery on Upper St. James. The chase followed what officials are already calling the Arkham Asylum Massacre, where thirteen people lost their lives at the hands of this assailant." The picture of Harleyquinn, obviously taken from a closed circuit video camera, displayed only her form – the two corpses that she had left behind her noticeably absent. "Inside sources at the asylum identify the oddly-dressed assailant as Dr. Harleen Quinzel, a former therapist and certified psychiatrist, who just last month gave her testimony to the court in approval of the Joker's return to the mental facility."

Harley's heart skipped a beat, and she clutched at her chest in very much the same way she imagined her mother was, somewhere in west Gotham. Her rocks glass on dropped to the floor, and she hardly noticed the movement beside her as the Joker placed the bottle down and turned to firmly place his hands on her shoulders to prevent her from falling over.

"Listen to me..." he whispered in his gruff tone.

"Oh my God..."

"Listen to me!" His tone had changed suddenly, now aggressive and demanding, though even with its added effect it took Harley's massive, wandering eyes a moment to find his. "What did you think was going to happen? You thought you were going to kill a bunch of people and the rest of your life was going to be sunshine and lollipops?"

Clearly that wasn't the case, but his demanding questions were not helping her away from the state of shock she was sliding into. "My... my mother..." she managed to whisper, in complete horror of what she had done. The reality of it came crashing into her, the way an unsuspecting bird flies into the spotless window of a skyscraper. She pictured the woman, an older, high-pitched version of herself, housecoat-bound, keeling over in her living room at the revelation.

_Mama, your baby ain't comin' home. _

"What about her?" the Joker asked without hesitation, shaking her from her myopic hallucination. He steadied her with one hand and splayed his fingers out as he waved his hand in front of her face. "You plan on going home? You don't have a home now, Harley. You don't have a safety net, you don't have a savings account, you don't even have a retirement plan."

Taking a deep breath, she noticed the little differences in his face that no one else would have known to look for. There was a softness in his mouth, so that his scar was not pulled or contorted into its usually menacing smile; his eyebrows arched ever so slightly as he spoke, and although his tone was as grave as usual, there was something calming about the truth he was laying on her now.

"There's nowhere you can run back to to hide yourself away again. There's just you – the part of you that you always wanted to know was there."

She blinked her stunned eyes once in response, and the two of them turned back to the screen as the morning newscaster began talking again. "Among those found dead in the asylum was Jeremiah Arkham, CEO and Chief Psychiatrist of Arkham Asylum and a chairman of the Arkham Foundation and Trust for the Mentally Ill, who was reportedly shot in the head. Sources say the police suspect Harleen Quinzel of his murder as well, but GCPD has yet to comment." Nodding his head respectfully, the newscaster shook his head and looked back up to the camera. "He will be missed. Jeremiah Arkham, dead at sixty-seven."

The newscaster continued to cover their escape from the asylum, but Harley paid it no mind, particularly as the Joker turned back to her with an expression of full-blown shock on his face... something Harley had never seen before, and which she suddenly found was an expression that struck fear into her heart. His gentle grip on her shoulders turned into that of a bear trap, tightening around the white latex collar of her new disguise.

"You... killed Jeremiah Arkham!" he asked, in a growl that seemed to leap from the very depths of his throat.

The only response she could muster was that massive, all-encompassing smile of hers, praying that displaying it for him so readily would be enough to sway his fetish for violence.

But his booming voice just called out again, "_You killed Jeremiah Arkham?_"

Anger suddenly boiled up inside her. Taking a sudden hold of his wrists, she ripped his hands away from her vulnerable neck. "What the fuck did you want me to do?" she asked him venomously. "'Dur, say Arkham, I know I'm shooting up the place, but why don't I let you, the bane of my very existence, walk out the fucking door scott-fucking-free to live another scummy day!' Are you out of your goddamned mind? _Of course_ I killed him! What does it matter to you?"

At just that moment, her sudden personality flip became apparent to the two of them – and without another word the two of them burst into laughter.

Harley couldn't help but see the microcosm that had developed here – the little two-minute snippet of their relationship that would end up coming to embody the rest of it. An emotional rollarcoaster: affection, shock, inspiration, intimidation, apologies, accusations...

With him, her slow little merry-go-round world spun a mile a minute.

He had buckled over, placing his hands on his knees to compose himself, before his laughter settled into a light chuckle, and he stood to his full height again. "Ah hell, I don't care... but I would have paid to do the bastard in myself." Picking up the whiskey bottle by the neck, he looked it up and down before he turned his attention back over to her. She looked back at him, her thin smile wearing down on him enough to flash another of his own before he looked back down into the deep amber liquid. "You deserved it more anyway. You put up with his bullshit longer than I did."

"Well..." she started, sliding herself back up onto the barstool, "thanks, I guess..."

Harley crossed her arms over the bar, and leaning her chin into the small cradle she had made for herself there, she took a moment of silence to ponder her actions. Just as she reached a final thought, it seemed to simultaneously slide out of his mouth, as if he'd just been waiting for her to come up with it on her own – as if he was the one who had placed it there to begin with.

He took a deep breath, and she turned to press her cheek against the cold smooth marble surface of the bar as he told her, "Why regret anything? You're a smart girl... you are exactly where you want to be."

And as she sat there beside him, she realized that she was.

It soothed her ragged nerves just enough for her to catch up on three days' missed sleep.


	38. Chapter 38: Message

The distinct hollow feeling of the whiskey bottle in his bare hands had lost its power of indulgent persuasion not long after Harley had fallen asleep at the bar. Now it was replaced by a tiny, steaming cup of espresso. The Joker was impressed with how, even in sleep, she managed to maintain her balance: precariously perched atop the backless barstool even as she was slumped over in it, her head resting calmly upon her folded arms on the bar.

He'd managed to find a few of his misplaced belongings around the bar – another carbon copy of his ankle-length frock, of which he'd had several made, along with a plethora of knives and different armaments he'd stashed here for convenience. If he wanted to make a quick and impromptu escape further into the underbelly of Gotham, he had everything he needed, but instead, the Joker had reclined, made himself a cup of coffee, and allowed the girl to sleep. She did so heavily, underneath the cover of his thick coat.

He couldn't help but smile as he'd draped it over her earlier. She looked very much like a child in her father's clothes, swimming in folds on excess fabric, face concealed in a high collar. But now, as she lay resting, he enjoyed his coffee, unable to help the comical aspect of watching his own criminal escapades from just mere hours ago. It seemed almost criminal in itself, to feel so at ease after what some would call a nearly disastrous ordeal.

Just another day in the life.

The Joker sipped at the hot liquid, his eyes mesmerized by the reports, and his teeth occasionally gnashing at faulty and obtuse speculation. _Was_ the Joker working with this rogue police force responsible for the death of Captain Brutus Carpozo earlier in the year? _Had_ the Joker been planning the brainwashing of the responsible but inexperienced Dr. Harleen Quinzel, _or_ was she just as twisted as the people she was treating? They had countless psychological experts in to offer their own opinions. Some of them criticized the young doctor (with more opinion than fact, he thought). Others offered up possible explanations of her sudden shift to the dark side.

But from where he was sitting, the Joker couldn't understand the logic. Not that he had ever had a very intimate relationship with logic.

To him, Harley's actions had striven to be nothing short of heroic. Her opinion of him might not have been as popular as the rest of Gotham's, seeing as the rest of Gotham viewed him as some murderous, delirious, anarchistic, terrorizing clown. She had given him pause to think that maybe his tactics were not operating on the level he needed them to. Harley's more intimate knowledge of his psyche led her to some understanding, and led him to camaraderie. But she'd had six months. Would he have really been able to reach her with just one of his mischievous, fool-hearted hijinks?

Food for thought, he had to suppose...though for a split second, as his eyes moved over to her sleeping form once again, he was thankful that she had taken the time.

"_Well, from where we in the psychiatric community are sitting, it's clear that this young girl is a victim, rather than a constituent to the Joker's own implementation of 'martial law' so to speak_," one of the hired television-ready psychiatrists told a nearby news anchor. "_She's been made an example of. The Joker views Dr. Quinzel as his own work of art: an exhibit to all those who believed him to be below them. That anyone, and indeed everyone, can fall from grace._"

Rage balled up in the pit of his chest, a warm feeling that spread throughout his entire body. The small, rounded white cup he'd been holding clattered upon the saucer that laid flat in his opposite palm. It was unusual that he would find himself so riled up, and on the surface his mind seemed to scratch around for a reason why, though his heart didn't have very far to travel to reach the truth.

He ignored it, like he always did.

Turning around on the stool, he turned to face the bar again. His eyes seared imaginary holes into the mirror, that impenetrable gaze piercing right back at him. While he felt explosive, there was something perfectly balanced and calm with how she rested lazily next to him.

The Joker listened to the almost ambient sound of the news anchor thanking the therapist for his time, and even as the two said their 'good-days' to one another, he couldn't help but ponder what had been said. Was she really just another victim, the way Dent had been? A mere exhibit to the world to show how quickly one could fall from great heights, a dismembered plane hurtling like a fireball toward the Earth? For a moment, he watched her reflection in the mirror before he turned to regard her again.

She certainly didn't look like a victim, and the Joker knew a victim when he saw one.

Harley had told him that if she planned on going with him, she was going to do it when she was good and ready. Making it a point to stick to her guns could not have been easy when working for a man like Arkham, but in the end Harley had laughed last, and she would laugh hardest if he had anything to say about it.

His protective nature was the first thing to catch him off guard. It made him so furious that for a moment he wanted very badly to rip off the coat he had so gingerly placed over her a mere hour ago, and kick her out the front door.

"_Thanks for the lift, toots!_" he could hear himself call after her as she rushed away with her life and nothing more. "_Baby, it's a wild world!_" But somehow, in a thought he expected to find comfort in, he only found more of that prolonged sense of nausea.

In reality, beyond the unexpected way his protectiveness had rattled his internal cage, there was something to be said for how it made him feel - although he would never actually _say_ it. She didn't need it, and had proven on thirteen different occasions earlier that night that she didn't need his figure looming over her in watchful direction. She wanted it, and even the Joker had to admit, that was much preferred.

But before he could even smile to the internal revelation there, he heard static radiating from the television. Within a few seconds, the emergency broadcast system had kicked on, a pulsing, high-pitched tone spreading through the room to capture the attention of everyone within it.

Harley didn't rattle for an instant.

With a distinct lack of enthusiasm, the Joker slid around on his stool once more, staring up to the screen. He might have been flattered, except that his escape couldn't have been been a cause for this kind of alarm. And even he was caught off guard when the tone broke, and the scene suddenly changed to a familiar man in SWAT gear seated behind a plain white table, in the basement of some nameless building, prepared to give what could _only_ be a riveting quasi-press conference in response to the Joker's escape.

Despite the little that he knew about him, one thing was clear to the Joker – the man didn't have a hard time making enemies.

"_Good morning, Gotham_," he said, in less of a monotone than the Joker had been expecting. "_Today the sun rises on a new city, and has cast some much-needed light on the hidden predicament you've been facing for some time now. In recent months, with the Mob partially abolished, and the Joker safely tucked away in Arkham's hollowed halls, you've slept, snug in your beds – believing, even for just an instant, that you were safe. That finally, the __GCPD had done their jobs, and that you and your family could live without the fear and crime that had constantly surrounded you." _

It was obvious to the Joker that this self-important, wannabe revolutionary would spend his next artfully-crafted paragraph smashing the idealistic house of cards he had just described.

"_However, as you're no doubt coming to realize this morning, with the recent escape of the Joker and his little, lovelorn brainwashee, fear and crime have broken through the floodgates of your city's firmest protection, and will no doubt wreak havoc among the streets of your 'fair' city once again." _

The Joker fought the growing urge to hurl the half-filled porcelain coffee cup at the screen, but before he had even had the chance to regain his composure, the scene had changed to what was clearly the closed-captioned television camera footage from inside Arkham during Harleyquinn's massacre.

"_As you watch this, what are you thinking?" _the sinister voiceover asked as Harleyquinn's form bludgeoned a security guard to death, before she turned, walked away and winked at the camera – footage that would remain on loop as the SWAT gear vigilante spoke to his audience of millions._ "Were you thinking that tonight, as your precious little children come home from school, you would hug them tightly and keep them locked up and safe for as long as you could? Maybe you'll cough up the money you need to finally put that extra deadbolt on the door. There could be any number of thoughts running through your head. _

"_But the one thought you should be paying particularly close attention to right now is that this woman was your neighbor. This woman taught your children. This woman served you coffee this morning... she is you, and everyone you know. Why? Because two weeks ago, this was a distinguished doctor at one of the country's top penitentiaries for the mentally ill, and today, she's a cold-blooded killer._"

Suddenly the feed stopped, and when it returned to the previous scene, the speaker was now one of a group of nine other men. "_Your next thought should be this – that your enemies are our enemies, that your children are our children. We are not affiliated with your half-assed police-force, vigilante 'superheroes', or psychotic criminal clowns. We are your task force, and we speak on your behalf in a city whose official language is violence. We are the official translators in this new age of Gotham's crime, and we will will prove it to you with the truth._"

Finally, as if some of the Joker's irreligious prayers had been answered, he stopped talking. The Joker was relieved for a moment, but was put off by the fact that the footage from a mere moment ago was looping once again: Harley, playfully winking to the camera, as the dying security guard seized from severe head trauma. Every time the footage looped, the Joker's grip on his coffee cup tightened, until...

_Bang._

A sudden sensory overload overtook the next several seconds. First came the unexpected shattering of the tiny espresso cup, finally succumbing to the pressure of the Joker's hand. Second came the unanticipated arrival of his men, drenching the place in a burst of mid-morning sunlight. Their entrance compelled the Joker to instinctively reach for the shotgun that had until now been propped up, business end down, along the bar at Harley's feet. The sudden commotion caused her to stir from her sleep, and moved the Joker to hold her with one hand down against the bar, using his free hand to cock the gun, before tossing it into the air just enough to slid his hand back to the handle.

Rudely awakened by the scuffle, Harley's hand instinctively reached to the small of her back, withdrawing her holstered revolver, pointing it toward the crowded doorway. The coat that had been draped around her slid off her shoulders and would have hit the floor had it not been for the Joker's hand on her shoulder.

All three men simultaneously threw their hands up in the air, and would have waved a white-flag if they had been decked out in anything brighter than black. The Joker's eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the sudden impact of the light, then he lowered his weapon and spoke with a tinge of frustration in his voice.

"Jesus, all black? Very nice. Next time, try to look like a gang of thugs, okay? You're ruining the company image."

Harley was next to follow suit, lowering her gun and sitting up once the Joker had lifted his heavy hand off her shoulder, readjusting his coat as he did. Though she looked back at him in apprehension, his disjointed outburst passed as soon as it had appeared. He waved them in, much the way your mother would if you were letting the heat out of her house on a cold day.

"A little jumpy, Bossman?" asked the one in front. He was a young black kid, scrawny, but not exactly the type you'd like to meet in a dark alley. He was strange-looking, with a lean build and large, animated eyes. He wore cornrows in his hair and spoke in a very distinct, nasally Bronx accent.

"I hate scary movies," the Joker told him, gesturing up to the screen, which now pictured the news crew scrambling to understand what had suddenly happened to their signal. It appeared to have all passed like a bad dream. They chuckled, watching the news anchor rushing to get his microphone clipped back on.

More than the television, though, something else in the room had captured their attention. It didn't take the Joker more than a second to see they had all placed their curious stares upon Harley. Her blue eyes fluttered to rid themselves of sleep and take in the sight of these three strangers who had been corralled to his place for her own conveniences.

But the Joker was no good at introductions.

"Did you get everything?" he asked, unfazed by the awkwardness that had settled in.

It took the man with the corn-rows a minute to pull his massive eyes away from Harley. "Yeah, there's about seven boxes in the back of the Tahoe. Just had a new tint installed last week."

The Joker walked behind the bar to wipe the thickly sweetened coffee off his hand with a towel. "What's state regulation?"

"Thirty-five percent," he answered simply.

"Hmm..." He grunted in a pleased tone, tossing the rag back down on the bar. "Nice and dark, just the way I like it."

It probably looked like he and the kid got on like friends, though it didn't very much feel that way to the Joker. Taking the time to actually appreciate a conversation was not a habit of his. Usually, it was enough for him to domineer the conversation, dish out a few commands, and watch as people went about their business. He wasn't around to be their friends, and yet a couple of them had taken to him for some reason – they all wanted his attention, in the same way he found himself secretly pining for Harley's.

Today it was a little more of a fight to keep their attention on him, though, as the three of them watched Harley turn to face away from them, resting her weary head in the cradle of her folded arms. He snapped his fingers at them to recapture their focus, and obediently they all turned their gaze back at him. "Okay, listen up!" he called out, to make sure they had those loose-fitting thinking-caps of theirs strapped on. "I need a couple of important things done before any of us get too excited about my _triumphant_ return just yet."

Each of them blinked a set of deeply focused eyes as their fearless leader shelled out his commands. "Marky," he started, pointing to a younger, blond boy who stood just to the left and slightly behind the young, dark-skinned kid who led the others inside. The kid was a talker, and usually the go-to networking guy. He knew everyone in the business worth knowing; his father used to have great underground connections until the old man got pinched a few years back. Marky took up the family business and joined forces with the Joker when he was told he wouldn't have to worry about his mothers massive medical bills anymore.

"Marky. I need you to try to get in touch with old contacts. Tip-toe around, alright? Don't call attention to yourself. If you're having a hard time getting a hold of somebody, move on. Chances are the cops cleared out most of the city's mob dealers." The thing Joker liked the most about Marky was that he genuinely seemed to love his job, and he was good at it. He nodded enthusiastically once the Joker had handed off his assignment. "Keep your blabber to a minimum, see who's in and who's out. Be vague. Don't want anyone knowing what I'm up to this time around, okay?"

"You got it, boss," he said in a thick lower east-end accent, like he was from Boston – gave him that "friendly-badass" appeal.

"Good. Joey, I need you to round up the usual suspects. I don't know who's in the joint, who's on the lam, but tell 'em if they're looking for work, then I've got a home for them. You've been keeping in touch?"

Manpower was one of the hardest resources for the Joker to procure, especially in this industry. You couldn't trust every Tom, Dick, and Harry to run around town doing your business for you, and that was why he liked Joey. He was older, balding, likable. He'd been around the block a few times and recognized some familiar faces. Most importantly, though, he had a great sense of intuition. He could tell when someone was slippery, or if they were simply an honest criminal. Joey owned a car scrapping business, and crossed over to theirs once he discovered that you could make a lot more crushing people into cubes than you could doing it to cars. He'd done business with everyone from Carmine Falcone to the former Mayor of Gotham. He knew who was in it for kicks, and who made a career out of this game.

Maintaining his usual serious expression, Joey nodded. "Yeah, there's about thirty guys I talk to on a regular basis, lookin' for a little 'work' on the side."

Just what he wanted to hear. "Good. Pick your favorite ten, and let 'em know I'm back in business. I'm going to really need to put some feelers out if we want to get this gravy train set in motion again."

"And me?" the last of them chimed in.

This was the infamous Bosco and out of the three of them, he had been watching the girl the closest. It wasn't difficult to spot his massive eyes scoping out the rest of the room before settling back on the lethargically resting Harley.

"You?" The Joker pointed his eyes up to him with his chin tilted downward ever so slightly. "You got the Tahoe out of storage, I'm guessing?"

Bosco nodded with his crooked smile. The Joker nodded back and pulled out the shotgun he'd been wielding off the bar. "Good. You're taking us home," he said, motioning between himself and Harley a couple times to make his travel plans known to the rest of them.

It couldn't have been the demand that had surprised him. Bosco had acted as chauffeur to the Joker many times before, but something threw the three men off. Try as they might, they couldn't wipe the looks of utter befuddlement from their faces.

He didn't really care. He'd never once had to explain his actions to anyone, and he wasn't about to start. Nonetheless, it wouldn't hurt to assert some authority. "Is that a problem?"

All three men snapped out of their stupor as Bosco shook his head left and right. "Hey man, it's your joint. You just lemme know, and I'll take you wherever you want to go."

And they'd done exactly as he expected them to. They'd learned to get pretty good at jumping whenever the Joker had asked them to, and they all knew full well what happened when you questioned him. Granted, they all had their own opinions on what was transpiring, but yet another of the unwritten rules of working for the Joker – although it borrowed heavily from the first rule – was to keep your opinion to yourself, because he was smarter than anyone who worked for him.

"Then pull the car around," he told him, motioning Bosco and the others toward the door. "I'm getting sick of this place."


	39. Chapter 39: Tongue

_Hello All!_

_Before we begin, just wanted to send you a little note!_

_For the last couple weeks I've been fighting with myself over what I should do for my readers for the holiday season. I wanted to take this time to give back to the readers who have done so much for me over the last six months. Your readership and reviews of this story have done more for me than I could ever begin to describe. You helped make an idea of mine come to fruition. Writing this story has been at once frightening, exciting, frustrating, and incredibly rewarding. _

_Now, there's only a limited amount of things that I can do for my readers short of going out and buying you all presents. It's unfortunate, but I don't know all of you well enough to be able to do it, and sadly, my budget for "Tragedy Deferred" has a will always be $0.00 (ZERO!) dollars. But, just like I'm sure many of you are, I'm more about experiences than possessions. So, I would like to offer you an experience. _

_Some time during the month of December, once exams have wrapped for the majority of my readers, I propose that I host for you (and myself, of course) a little event. So, please consider this an invitation to a live chat with yours truly on December 18th, between Noon and 7:00pm EST. During this time we'll be having live discussion full of fun things like picture spamming, general fandom discussion, live chapter reading, and maaaaybe a few spoilers, who knows? ^_~! I'm going to be around for so long because I realize that there are lots of people who read from all corners of the globe, and if you live in another time zone I want to be as accommodating as humanly possible._

_So, if you're interested, and even if you're not, please RSVP. We'll be using , a web based chat system that is incredibly user friendly, and allows for voice-chat, so if you want to hook up your microphones, I'd be more than happy to talk to each of you. If you're interested in participating, please let me know and I will send you the link for the chat. _

_Again, thanks for reading, and hopefully we'll talk soon. _

_Cheers! _

_P.S. I have a poll in my profile, about which of my favorite chapters I will read. I will read the top three so vote __wisely. In addition, I will answer formspring questions during the chat. If you have a question you would like answered in either text, or during the ch__at, please go to my profile, click on the "website" button __and send me a question or two!_

_Thanks, and enjoy Chapter 39._

_

* * *

_The word "gridlock" would come to mind, but even that was putting it lightly. Cars crammed themselves bumper to bumper, inching through the morning rush in an attempt to get their passengers to work on time. You could usually set a clock to the traffic as it puttered away through the streets of Gotham. At 8:50, you could be stuck behind a transport truck with its four-ways on, and by nine o'clock somehow be sitting comfortably at your desk, enjoying the day's first cup of coffee. Things seemed to move so fast and so suddenly in the city. Like animals convening to drink from a crocodile-infested river, no one stayed in one place very long; everyone was a moving target.

Usually, spending time out in the open was a cause for concern for a criminal. It left you vulnerable and open to identification. But here, from behind tinted windows, the Joker watched the world move at a hurried pace around him. Despite his escape, Gotham was still business as usual.

That's what he loved about this city - the citizens of Gotham had such an intrepid nature. Were they afraid? Almost certainly, but that wasn't going to stop them from living their lives, to a certain degree.

After all, they never stood by the river's edge very long. Which was why, at nine o'clock, from where they had pulled over to wait out the traffic, they emptied out of the road like rats scurrying away from the rising waters of a sinking ship.

Everything was strangely, eerily quiet. Save for a few straggling pedestrians, the vacant streets lent absolutely no noise to the inside of the darkened Tahoe. The silence came as a much-needed relief to him, and what appeared to be the perfect remedy to Harley's insomnia. She sat peacefully curled up in a fetal position, snuggled tightly against the heated leather bench seat in the back. His coat once again lay draped over her. And while he could have taken the opportunity to remain close to her, he sat at the opposite window, eyes scanning the angled and jagged architecture that framed upper Fifth Street.

As their oversized SUV rolled through town, the landscape moved from upscale office buildings, to posh brownstones, to low-rent apartment buildings and subsidized housing - not as bad as the Narrows, but certainly not far from it. You couldn't drive more than a few hundred feet without having to swerve around a steaming sewer grate, or an abandoned shopping cart brimming with vagrant's treasure.

The Joker could feel the car slow to a stop in front of an automated gate. He tucked himself low in the back seat, hiding from any surprise flashlights that might violate the darkness of the vehicle for a closer look at the contents. He'd always informed the men who drove him not to bring any attention to themselves, especially when they drove him here. This place was the single most important spot in the entire city: beyond this gate was a series of privately owned and leased warehouses, hundreds of them that consumed nearly the entire southeast corner of Gotham.

Somewhere within that industrial maze, the Joker had made himself a home.

And if home was where the heart is, then this home was the base for the Joker's heart of darkness. Every single piece of mischief, every shred of depravity, every one of his mind-blowing ideas had been hatched here, hidden away from the rest of the world.

Although well-hidden, it was hardly his fortress. Some of the men he worked with were familiar with the location; Bosco clearly had such an intimate knowledge of the location that he could drive there without even one whispered reminder of the directions. Why would the Joker trust them with this utmost secret? Easy - there was a list of unwritten rules that were shared among the men once they started working for him. Number one on the list was that they had a pretty good gig going on here, that no one was liable to pay them better for the amount of work they would be doing... and for that, the Joker purchased your silence. Jumping ship to another team and ratting out to the cops were not options.

As soon as you thought that you were smarter than the Joker, the Joker would prove to you that you weren't. Fear kept them in place. It had only taken one attempt to blackmail him to convince them of that, a while ago.

He remembered it almost fondly.

"Yo, you better watch yourself, son!" one of the younger, gangster kids on his first team had said through his teeth, when the Joker had refused to pay him extra for bringing in a big shipment of plastic explosive. Explosive was the holy grail of his operation. It was the hardest resource to procure, closely monitored by the government, used the least, and often the most expensive. And while the Joker had been impressed with the shipment that had been brought to his warehouse, he wasn't about to get shoved into a corner by some eighteen-year-old punk kid who didn't know what the hell he was doing, didn't realize that he was in way over his head.

He'd swiftly turned around on his heel, and looked over his shoulder to the kid with a raised brow. He remembered gesturing to himself, as if he couldn't possibly be the one the kid was talking to. But, when he'd stood defiant, arms crossed, nose pointed up in the air, as if daring the Joker to push him – well, he hadn't hesitated. Without blinking an eyelash, he'd taken a few casual steps toward the young man, calmly motioning him over as if to negotiate some kind of a truce.

Then he'd reached out with a large gloved hand, and the wide breadth of his palm had nearly engulfed the kid's face. Terror caused him to call out, and the sheer malice exuding from the Joker had caused the rest of his team to look on in fascination and horror.

"I always get a kick out of kids like you. You think you've got it _aaaaall_ figured out," he'd told him with a squinted, cynical stare, his hand closing around his jaw with painful strength. With glistening eyes, the kid had tried to mutter a few pleading words.

Before he could get any more out, the Joker sliced out his tongue. He'd tossed the piece of still-quivering raw flesh at the young Bosco's feet.

Many of the other young men had turned to gag and heave at the sight, but not Bosco. Bosco had just smiled that strange and twisted smile of his, and from then on, the Joker had liked him. He was trustworthy, and just a little fucked up. Culturally, he was the perfect fit for his little 'organization'. Now, whenever he needed a drive to the warehouse, Bosco was the man behind the wheel. The fewer that knew about this place, the better.

Weaving slowly through the maze of tremendous warehouses, they turned a corner and drove alongside one of the smaller buildings. Unlike the other rows of endless truck gates and shipping docks, this one had a very basic set-up: a singular truck gate for general, low-traffic off-loading. However, the strangest feature of the warehouse was that other than the shipping dock, there didn't appear to be any other entrances to be found.

As his makeshift chauffeur smoothly drove along the back of the warehouse, the Joker turned his attention back to Harley. She stirred slightly when the Tahoe slowed down over a small bump to a mechanical steel platform. He placed his hand on her shoulder to soothe her. It was only a few seconds before her lids slowly slid back down over her sleeping eyes.

Bosco leaned over to reach into the glove compartment of the SUV, and plucked out a remote control before he turned to look back over his shoulder to the Joker. "Not that I'm questioning you or her or anything..." he started out, casually enough, and the Joker didn't seem to mind the authority in his voice when he asked: "But are you sure about this? You've either cut up or killed anyone other than your tightest crew that comes to this place."

"This _is_ my tightest crew," he said.

Another thing the Joker loved about this kid was that he was bright enough to catch on to his often cryptic repartee. His soft smile seemed a little out of place on an aspiring youth, but smile he did as his eyes moved from the Joker to the sleeping girl, still curled on the seat the way a cat curls up in sunlight. Nodding, Bosco hit a button of the entry remote that he'd pulled from the glove compartment. There was a soft whirring as gears arranged themselves, and before long the platform below the Tahoe lowered itself into the ground, shrouding it in shade.

The platform lowered itself underground, entering a wide, low-ceiling underground storage. Once the Tahoe had landed safely out of sight from the outside world, Bosco pulled forward into a makeshift parking space between two wrapped skids of industrial strength ammonia.

Carefully turning off the ignition, Bosco turned to look over his shoulder to the Joker motioning to his sleeping companion. "You gonna need help with her?"

The Joker furrowed his eyebrows at the suggestion. "I might be out of shape, but I'm not that bad." Harley was tiny enough, and didn't appear to be much of a challenge, but Bosco's corn-rowed head just tilted to the side in apprehension.

"Watch yourself, fit girls weigh more than you think they do," the young man chided him, but the Joker scoffed.

"What do you know about fit girls?"

With his large eyes scolding him, Bosco pointed an objecting finger in his direction, although the smile on his thick lips clearly recognized the joke. "LaShonda is beautiful."

"All two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of her?" the Joker asked, sliding his arms under Harley's sleeping form once he'd opened the door. Bosco shot him a curious, nearly surprised glance when he saw the gentle way the Joker pulled her unconscious form up onto his lap, before sliding out of the rear passenger side of the car.

Bosco had already made his way out the driver's seat and was opening the trunk door, exposing the neatly packaged and labeled boxes full of her belongings. As the two of them looked over the contents of the trunk, the Joker offered up a nervous chuckle. "Yeah, she's kinda anal-retentive."

Lifting a brow, Bosco didn't seem surprised. "Yeah, I figured."

With a soft chuckle, the Joker turned away from the truck, making his way toward the opposite side of the warehouse. The large banks of light switched on one after another as he moved past low stacks of skids and toward a large freight elevator.

"Oh, no help?" Bosco asked as the Joker's back faced him, his form moving away at an impressive speed.

"I'm sure you can handle a few boxes," he called back to his associate. "She's a little heavier than I thought."

Alright, so she wasn't exactly the hundred-fifteen-pound, petite-figured girl he imagined she would be. She was probably fifteen to twenty pounds more than that, but that didn't strike him as a curious conclusion. Bosco _had_ brought up the observant point that she was quite fit. The Joker himself knew how much elbow grease to took to bludgeon a man into convulsions after just a couple strikes, let alone those consecutive back flips – and she had given him quite the shock with that swift kick in the ass. Harley was able to hold her own, and still managed to look good in a leather catsuit.

Easily worth an extra fifteen pounds.

Keying a button with the tip of his weather-beaten shoe, it wasn't more than a few seconds until the closing double doors came apart, the chain link gate rolling up from behind it. A few seconds after that, Bosco moved in after him, wheeling a vertical, heavy-duty dolly in front of him. He minded the gap carefully as he kept the boxes in place. He was a young kid – though the Joker didn't know for sure, he had to be in his mid-twenties for sure. Never answering for his astute sense of observation and curiosity, he also never hesitated to ask a question, regardless of its nature. Bosco lacked any distinguishable trace of fear, but still managed to have a good deal of propriety and understanding, which was why when he asked –

"Shit, that really is your doctor, isn't it?"

- the Joker didn't really fly off the handle. "She was my therapist," he said simply. "And keep it down, would ya?"

From here, Bosco could have asked any number of questions, like _why don't you just wake her up_. The Joker was starting to wonder that himself as Bosco brought down the chain gate, selecting the button for the third floor mezzanine. Harley had legs and was capable of using them, but when she'd confessed to a lack of sleep, when she'd panicked to hearing her name mentioned on the television as a suspect, when she'd fallen asleep at the bar like an out-of-place child who had tagged along with their parents to a party...he wouldn't have gone so far as to call it _sympathy_, but there was some feeling of pity there.

Truth of it was, she was sleeping, and sleeping hard. He didn't want to wake her up. And it wouldn't have been such a big deal for him, if it hadn't been so painfully obvious to his comrade. When people assumed the obvious, they stopped asking questions... although it wasn't like Bosco to assume the very _best_ of him. Usually, if the Joker was caring a body, it was only so he could dump it in the river. But this felt different. He wasn't just moving weight around, and if he knew that, than the intuitive young man next to him certainly did.

The two men stood in a strange silence as the freight elevator made its way up to the third floor mezzanine. Bosco's large eyes scanned every square inch of the room that didn't include the Joker. Maybe, he reflected, he was destroying his own image. Maybe it was the equivalent of watching a couple kiss when you were acting as the third wheel. Do you look on and squirm, overcome by the warm fuzzy feeling, or do you look off awkwardly, as if impeding on a moment of intimacy? The Joker hardly thought himself the type, and...

...Why was he giving this so much thought?

He snapped out of it as the elevator came to a stop. Bosco leaned over to lift the chain gate, the automatic doors parting for them before they made their way onto the darkened floor. This floor had been walled off from the rest of the warehouse, and though its motif was hardly homey, it was significantly better then sleeping on a dirty mattress on a dusty floor.

"Where do you want these boxes, boss?" Bosco had asked in a quiet whisper, but the Joker only responded by gesturing with his nose to the left, toward a large island of cabinets set off to the side. Surrounding the island, and pressed against the wall to their left, was something that resembled a kitchen. The appliances appeared old, bubbly, as if they had been manufactured in the 70s, but they lacked the snazzy colors - no olive greens or muted beige-yellows. In fact, just about everything in the place seemed monochromatic.

To the right of the elevator was a wide living area. Mounted on the wall above a well-used black leather sofa was a set of four, large flat-screen televisions, along with a plethora of notepaper scattered over the coffee table. Empty coffee cups had been left behind from his short stint here just over a week ago, but prior to that, the place had been mostly cleared about by his crew.

The loft was separated into three levels. The first level was a general living space, and a set of grated steps led up to a smaller secondary mezzanine, which housed large umbrella lights along with a double-sided drafting table that peaked like a church's steeple, a working area on either side. More papers had been scattered about there, and momentarily, the Joker wondered how many of the ideas he had started on would be lost to him now. The third and final level was hardly noticeable from the where the two men had been standing by the elevator just a moment before.

The Joker seldom had a use for this place, hidden away from the rest of the world. In a city of as much commotion as Gotham, it was hard to believe that someone could find a reclusive place to reserve for themselves. But he'd always had a hard time sleeping, and never did so for more than a few hours every few days. Most of the time it didn't hinder or impede him in any way, but after a week or so of sleeping on sofas in front of blaring televisions, he found himself wandering through a thick fog, a veil of potential slip-ups and mishaps.

When that happened, he usually took it as his cue to come here. Although it had little more than a queen-sized bed, the headboard pressed against a bank of windows that lined the the ceiling of the entire warehouse, the place was kind of a sanctuary, his own secluded corner of the world.

But, until she woke up again, the place belonged to her.

With a few steps along the grated floor, he eased her down into the soft surface of the bed, cautiously sliding his arms out from under her. He watched as she immediately turned onto her side, once again resuming the familiar fetal position she had held in the car. Internally, he fluffed off some kind of urge to remain there, maybe watch her for a moment more. He stretched his arms over his head to relieve the strain of carrying her, and casually made his way back to the main floor.

As he was removing the last of the boxes off the dolly, Bosco glanced back up to him as the Joker jogged down the last few steps. "What'chu sayin' Bossman?" he asked casually, though it could be seen in the back of his gaze that he'd said a silent prayer to remove himself from the strangeness of the situation.

The Joker planted himself on the sofa, resting his elbows upon his knees before he reached for a money clip that had been resting for some time on the coffee table. Removing four or five bills from it, he pinched the wad between his index and middle figure and extended it to Bosco. "I don't care who goes: you, or Marky, or Joey – but just pick up some stuff. With any luck I'm going to be here for at least a bit longer than I was last time." A tinge of doubtful hope lingered in his sarcastic tone.

"What about her?" Bosco asked, gesturing up to the hidden mezzanine of their heads. "She gonna need anything?"

The Joker loved it when people tried to pass off 'snoopy' for 'considerate'. Without paying the kid another second's worth of attention, he turned to the television screens, turning each of them on and to another channel with the control. "If she needs anything," he started, in a sharp and prickly tone, "I'll be able to handle it."

"Alllllright..." he said, defeated, clapping his hands together once before turning to make his way out of the loft and onto his next task. The Joker turned to watch him go, thinking he saw a smirk paint its way across the young man's mouth.

"Oh, and Kid?" he asked, his stare stabbing toward the back of his skull, until his accomplice diligently turned around at the sound of an impending command.

"You utter a word of what you saw today, and it's gonna be _your_ tongue that hits the floor."


	40. Chapter 40: Home

A deep but startled breath went quickly through Harley's nose as she writhed into a long stretch, her limbs arching out along the length of a soft mattress. Her blue eyes had opened for a fraction of a second before they fluttered back down into semi-consciousness. She rested gently on her side, her arms folded around a pillow, squeezing it closely against her as she lazed comfortably in the afterglow of an amazing night's sleep, caught in those few moments between reality and the memory of dreaming.

Her mind had been cast far and away from where she lay. She rolled onto her back and arched it sharply, her spine popping in relief. She expected to open her eyes and greet the sunlight that filtered into her apartment window as she had any other day. The rhythmic pattering of rain against a metal roof sounded alien to her while resting so comfortably. She realized there was something different about the air, as she inhaled deeply through her nose once again. It was stale, and dusty, scented heavily by cardboard and grime.

Without another second's hesitation, her eyes shot open and slowly focused on the ceiling that hovered much higher above her head than her downtown apartment's could ever hope to reach. Steel girders and industrial cables lined the metal ceiling, the source of the out-of-place sound that had stirred her from sleep just a moment ago. Now that she was fully conscious, she became uniquely aware of the thin layer of dirt and sweat that had collected on her skin, giving her that feeling of uncomfortable stickiness one experiences on an abnormally hot day without a nearby shower.

As if rising from some sudden terrifying dream, she shot up out of bed, her hands immediately running over her torso to find the strange fabric that tightly surrounded her. Harley had never truly been fond of leather, or anything that resembled the feel, but this was synthetic and it squeaked and squealed loudly as she leapt from the bed.

The covers were only slightly tossed; she must have slept on top of them. Perhaps she would have woken up earlier out of pure dehydration had she been underneath them. She was sweating so profusely that she would have stripped right then and there if she' had something else to change into. The sheets and and the pillows were all mismatched, appearing very much like a larger version of the bed she had slept on for four years during college, back when the only thing you used a bed for was the occasional catnap and meaningless, casual sex with people you hardly knew.

She'd never seen this place before in her life. The grated floor felt strange under her feet, and by glancing around for just a few moments, Harley was able to gather that she was indeed in a warehouse of some sort, which would explain the scent of dirt and sawdust that lingered in the air. Though you could hardly call this a room. Beyond the bed was a railing, which opened up to the floor below it. She hurried over, gripping the railing tightly as she looked down to deduce her whereabouts. The sight only begged her onward, as the stairs before her led to another mezzanine before turning a sharp corner to yet another floor below it.

Harley made her way cautiously down the grated steps, praying that the clattering metal would not create too much noise. Reaching the second floor, she found it very much like the floor above, although this was very obviously a working space. Instead of a bed, it included white boards on wheeled stands, drafting tables, massive umbrella lights, scattered notes, and countless crumpled papers in an overflowing wastepaper basket.

She moved toward the drafting table, and delicately collected a mass of scattered papers from the floor underneath it, glancing over the pages as she organized them on the table's slanted surface. Rolls upon rolls of blueprint schematics had been delicately sealed with elastic bands, all standing up in a large plastic bin to the right of the table. Even while she combed the papers for any clues of her whereabouts, those schematics caught her interest. Reaching for one, she slipped off the elastic band that bound it, listening to it spiral and pop around the length of the roll before she spread it over the table.

Her eyes flashed over it wildly, taking in the construction design of a high-rise building that was due for completion next year. There was something familiar about it. Harley's eyes scanned down the page to the bottom left corner, where it read very clearly: _185 West Harbor Street, Gotham City. _

Then she remembered. This was the place where the Batman had apprehended the Joker.

Quickly rolling up the schematic along her torso, she wrapped the elastic bands back on either end, her mind pursuing a hunch. It only took her a few steps to bound down the last set of stairs, which weaved around a corner and onto the main floor. For a moment her breath escaped her, and half of her wanted to fold over at the waist and collapse onto the floor, just to make the weight of her mind easier to bear.

She couldn't even formulate a thought, but the sight waiting for her confirmed the hunch that she had devised only a mere few seconds before.

"Oh, you're awake. I was beginning to wonder if I should check your pulse or something. You were out for like..." And here there was a pause only long enough to check the clock in the corner of one of the four televisions that were going at once. "Twenty-seven hours."

How could this man be the Joker?

There he was, sitting on the sofa, wearing an old set of dark-rimmed, wire-framed glasses, with a notebook resting on his right thigh while he held a silver pen in his left hand. He wore a blue, ratted suit jacket, threads protruding from nearly every seam, with a loose-fitting T-shirt underneath that _might_ have once been white. With his legs crossed left over right, he sat making notes on the three different news channels that were all playing different, rotating stories on their recent escapades.

The fourth television played an old Bugs Bunny cartoon.

She fought for a breath, reality finally coming back to terrorize her, overwhelming her with dizziness. It all seemed so hard to swallow with the surreal image in front of her. Who was this man? He was so casual, so seemingly human. Better yet, who was she?

A monster. Nowhere near human at all.

He must have seen the color drain from her face, because he whipped off his misplaced spectacles and placed them on the coffee table with the notebook and pen. Lifting to his feet, he made his way over to her, urging her to move over to the sofa to sit down. She collapsed there, the palm of her hand moving up to meet her forehead.

"You brought me to your home?"

"_Home_ might be too strong a word..." he began to protest, but she interrupted him angrily.

"You brought me to your _home_?"

But, as she should have known, objection and retaliation usually didn't get you very far with the Joker. "What did you want me to do?" he asked, hovering over her as she buried her face in her hands. "Just leave you out there for the wolves to find you?"

She rubbed her face, and her fingers interlocked before they fell weakly between her knees. "Well, I wasn't expecting this..." she muttered, her flabbergasted eyebrows arching high on her forehead as she spoke.

Indeed, it hardly seemed like something the Joker would do. Harboring fugitives might have been just another part of his job, but even she knew this was different. She knew she was more than just a mere accomplice.

As if punctuating that very thought, he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his black trousers. Harley blushed and covered her face when she realized she had inadvertently glanced at his crotch.

Sitting down next to her on the couch, he simply shrugged his shoulders, scratching the back of his neck and rubbing under his nose. "I don't know what you want me to say."

It wasn't that he had done anything wrong. He could have left her in that bar, sleeping away, only to discover far later that she was a sitting duck in tepid water. And although she was thankful, she couldn't help but think that maybe the only reason for her being here was because of some misplaced feeling of obligation on his part.

"Why did you bring me here?" she asked him bluntly, with a bit of a tremble in her voice.

For a moment the Joker only scoffed and shrugged heavily. Then he extended his arms along the back of the couch, gazing off in the opposite direction.

"Because, you know..." she began, a little more exasperated, "I bailed you out, so you weren't going to leave me out to dry like that, right?"

Rising to his feet once again, he spun on his heels and pointed a accusatory finger at her. "No Harley, that's not it. You know that."

"Bullshit! I'm in the dragon's den. I'm in the most secret of secret places." She stood along with him, but felt immediately light headed, which urged her to sit down once more. "You make it sound like I don't _know_ you or something. You wouldn't trust anyone enough to bring them here."

There was a long silence that passed between them, and when he didn't answer right away she gave him a wide-eyed glance, her head quivering back and forth at his lack of response. He pressed his lips together and inhaled sharply through his nose, glaring at her.

"You're an idiot, you know that?"

He turned to step away from her and toward the kitchen on the opposite side of the room, clearly not anticipating such an eager argument from her. But happily, she snapped back, "What the hell are you talking about?"

From where he had buried himself inside the fridge, he poked his head back out to look at her as though she had eighty-five heads. "You're an idiot!" he called out again, plucking an apple from a fruit basket within the icebox. "First, I asked you like two weeks ago in your apartment to come with me, and you said no, because you'd do it on your own damn time. Fine, I let that slide. Forget the fact that I spent six months in a _room_ talking to you."

"Because you had to!"

With an ear-splitting grown, he threw the apple to her in an overhanded pitch that would have made a Yankees fan drool. She was able to catch it, amazingly enough, before she prepared herself for what was liable to be another piece of flying fruit.

Instead, he made his way back across the room toward her. "I don't do anything because I _have_ to," he growled through clenched teeth, and pointed threateningly to her face as he took a few steps closer. The only thing dividing them now was the backrest of the couch. "Now, if you can actually pull your head out of your ass long enough to remember, I chose you. Not out of any sorta misplaced attraction or raging hormones, like each and every one of your superiors probably guessed. I chose you because if I was going to talk to anyone, it was going to be you."

Harley's heart softened right along with her expression. Suddenly the apple had captured her attention instead of his eyes, piercing her with a blackness set on fire. After a moment or so, she took a deep breath and glanced up toward him again, with the question that had consumed her life for the past six months.

"Why me?"

His bushy blond brows softly furrowed into a concerned glance, and he too looked down at the apple he had ferociously thrown at her a mere moment ago. "Just... eat the apple. You're emotional. Your blood sugar is low."

As he turned toward the kitchen yet again, Harley's brain immediately jumped into therapist mode. Avoidance was a textbook insecurity tactic, and while she would usually let it go, she pursued it. After all, he couldn't get all that much angrier at her than he had just been.

"Don't avoid the question, Joker. You've gotten off six months scott-free without answering this question. So tell me why," she demanded, pressing her fingertip into the soft leather of the sofa, her eyes trained on him the way a mother watches a disobedient child: burning parental eyes scrutinizing every movement.

Drawing air through his teeth, he moved away from her again, pacing around the kitchen as if sorting out the words to say. It took him so long to respond that she had to try again. "Joker, you will tell me why or so help me-"

"Because the first thing out of your mouth wasn't another question about my God-damned _name_!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air as if giving up the goods to her once and for all. "And when you did finally ask, I almost felt compelled to tell you. Because you were the only one who really seemed like you wanted to know. That's why I spoke to you."

The aggression that had been churned up by his chivalrous but unprovoked act of bringing her home had completely faded. Harley had, indeed managed to pull her head out of her ass long enough to realize that his action was not out of obligation or half-assed gratitude. Rather, although he had revealed so much already, Harley knew there were more words that neither of them could muster the courage to say.

"Oh..." was all she could breathlessly muster, while she collected her thoughts. Shifting her eyes to the apple still loosely held in her palm, she used the opposite hand to pick idly as the sticker placed on its shiny surface. "I suppose it doesn't matter much anymore, anyway"

There was another distinct pause, but when he spoke next he sounded distinctly closer than he'd been a moment before. "What do you mean?"

"I mean..." she began, sighing afterward, her eyes shooting up to the ceiling. "I mean... your name. It doesn't matter much anymore. I don't know if it really mattered much to me in the first place." She hardly had the nerve to look back at him, thought she didn't really know why. Perhaps it had been that the Joker had inadvertently complimented her in some way – said something touching that forced her to actually consider the emotion in his statement, although there had been very little of it. But when she did finally look back at him, he regarded her with a squinted gaze that was not nearly so weathered or wrinkled as when he had his grease paints on. There was a silent cynicism that sat blatantly on his face.

"What I mean by that is... I don't know, there's just something that falls short in trying to assign some kind of a human description to you." When his gaze narrowed just a sliver more, she continued. "I mean... a name _defines_ you, it's the reason why no one names their dog "Nathan" or their cat "Harry"... the names are just too human."

"And I'm inhuman?" he asked, as though the mere idea of it was asking too much.

"Inhumane, yes. Inhuman?" The question caused Harley to consider his humanity for a moment. While the answer had popped into her mind within a mere moment, she stumbled over the words, fearing that they would take too firm a hold of his egomania. She spoke with a firm hesitation, but she spoke nonetheless. "You're... more that human. Humans are marked by their frailty... fear... emotionality. You are decidedly human as measured by your humanity. And as your therapist-"

"Former therapist," he corrected.

Grimacing at the thought, and despising the interruption, she continued as if he'd said nothing at all. "_As your therapist_, I can say that there are glimpses of what appears to be well practiced humanity in you... except, you aren't frail, or fragile, or anything of the sort. You're..."

"...Beyond all that?" he finished for her, with a quirked brow and a neutral mouth.

"Yeah... naming you would almost cheapen you."

When he looked off to the side, Harley had to wonder what he was thinking. Normally in discussions of this nature he would appear so disconnected, disinterested. However, this time... there was some kind of an investment on his part. This whole "name" subject was something that really seemed to spark his curiosity, his debating skills. She remained cautious – Harley was sure that she was setting those sparks off in front of a particularly short fuse.

After what felt like a long time but couldn't have been more than a few seconds, the Joker's eyes settled on her, his back resting lazily on the edge of the kitchen countertop. "Even the gods had names, you know."

Half a scoff escaped her nose. Harley brought the apple up to her mouth and took a large bite from the snapping skin. After chewing for a few seconds, she lifted her hand to cover her mastication and shrugged casually. "Well, I wasn't saying that you were a _god_, nor was I suggesting that you shouldn't have a name at all."

Pushing himself off the counter, he calmly made his way back over toward the couch, motioning for her to sit down once again. He plunked himself back down in the corner of the sofa that he'd been seated in before, opposite from her. "Well...people have a lot of different names for me."

Crunching into another bite of the apple, Harley only shrugged her dissatisfaction with his statement. "Yeah, well the Inuit have over a hundred different names for snow. Doesn't mean they respect it any less."

He glanced at her from the other end of the couch as though he might say something, but he just reached forward, lifted his glasses back up to his face, and looped them over one ear and then the other.

Harley let the silence stretch on a few moments longer, during which she found herself completely mesmerized by their surroundings. The coffee table was covered in crumpled papers, save for where his coffee cup sat on a coaster, the remote controls easily within his reach beside it. The notebook that sat on his thigh again was filled with scribbled handwriting, completely masculine and lacking all the characteristics of the bubbly feminine writing often adopted by men as they age. Yet regardless of its form, the Joker's notes appeared staggered in numbered format, much the same way one would write an essay outline. The funniest thing was that although she was watching him so intently, he paid her absolutely no attention, as though he was completely engrossed with the screens before him.

Mounted on the wall just beyond the opposite side of the coffee table was that four-square set of flatscreen televisions, each one of them tuned to a different channel. Upon the upper left hand television was the local Gotham City News Network, which had now moved from nightly broadcasts into a twenty-four hour crime bulletin. For some it was a depiction of what exactly was wrong with news media in today's world; for others it was as informational as a police scanner. Many households in Gotham had it running just to make sure their neighborhood's name wasn't mentioned.

Two other screens played similar nationwide news network stations, though Harley recognized one as having a primarily conservative bias, while the other was staunchly liberal. Occupying the bottom right hand screen was a an animated feature of the ambitious but constantly failing Wile E. Coyote, ineffectually opening a tiny parasol while plummeting off a cliff. Interestingly, all the televisions save for the cartoon were muted, and were running their closed captions.

The Joker was watching them all.

Harley turned back to regard him with a gaping maw. His eyes were flitting back and forth between the screens. He would make a full round and then flash down to the page to scrawl a few quick notes and then he would turn up to glance at the first screen again. Then he grinned, and at first Harley thought it might have been because he noticed she was watching him, until she realized his gaze was fixed on the small dust-plume the cartoon coyote made when he finally hit the earth below.

"You've gotta be kidding me..." Harley muttered, awestruck. She watched him so closely and for so long that the bite she'd taken from her apple moments ago was beginning to brown.

For a split second, he broke his gaze off peer over at her, and he seemed to do a double take once he had recognized her disbelief. Sighing heavily, he let his pen drop on the notepad with a heavy dose of impatience. "What? What is it now?"

"Uh... I..." She staggered her speech to allow herself a moment to collect her thoughts. "How... do you do that?"

"Do what?" he asked her with ostensible frustration.

Harley gestured to the screens with a flailing hand as they all flashed multitudes of information every second, baffled at how one man could take a plethora of different information and condense it all into concise but understandable notes. "'Do what'? How do you take notes on the day's happenings from three different sources while still laughing at Wile E. Coyote when he goes _splat_?"

"Joke's on you, I'm actually making notes on the cartoon." 

She knew he was just poking fun at her tendency to overestimate him, but right now, that wasn't the case. Harley leaned over in an attempt to take the black, leatherbound notebook from him. "Give me that!" she demanded, but he leaned away and held the book out of her reach.

"See, this is why I live alone."

But this time she would have none of it. "Why? Because you don't think the rest of society wouldn't understand what I've seen here today? You like keeping this a secret or something? You think you're going to destroy your image?" she snapped, gesturing toward the screen that provided the cartoon soundtrack to what was becoming another dramatic conversation. "Joker...that was amazing. This is not what I saw in therapy."

The Joker pushed her back to the other side of the couch, scrunching up his face before asking. "What didn't you see in therapy?"

Harley had to admit, the question did catch her off guard – although maybe it was that she was secretly hoping that she _wouldn't_ get questioned on such a choice comment. Short of a serial killer in a canvas jumpsuit, what had he shown her? Did it compare to anything she was seeing now?

Heaving a heavy sigh, she gestured to the space around them, before back to him. "I didn't expect anything like this."

He slammed the cover of his notebook shut so firmly that it made her jump. "What were you expecting, Harley? You think I lived under an overpass or something?"

"No!" she answered sharply, suddenly feeling very ashamed.

"Then what?" But just as she opened her mouth to answer, he held his hand up to stop her. Frowning, he turned back to something he'd noticed on the televisions again, throwing open the cover of his notebook with his fingertips and scribbling more furiously than before. She thought he'd decided to drown out the thought of her analysis, but no more than a few seconds' jotting later, he slammed the heavy end of his pen into the pad and looked back to her.

"I don't need you psychoanalyzing me anymore, alright? I know how I operate. You can't just sit there and dissect me like a rat."

"I'm not trying to..." she began her rebuttal, but he cut her off.

"Listen, I don't care." He waved the pen at her to catch her attention, but his squinting eyes hardly looked as menacing without the thick black circles surrounding them. "Tell yourself whatever you have to – that I brought you here out of some misplaced sense of guilt, or appreciation, or whatever."

His words made her freeze, her back pressed against the sofa's armrest as if to escape the fury behind his ballpoint pen. As if he could sense the fear she'd had all along, he seemed to know the exact words to say to cut her the deepest.

She couldn't cry now. She'd just gotten here.

"So, think whatever you want, but the one thing you're not allowed to do is sit there and _observe_ me, okay? You've had enough of that. You had six months to sit around and observe me, and now ask yourself how much you really know, hmm?"

Another punctuated silence passed between them before the Joker nonchalantly turned back to his notebook and resumed writing. Quietly, he added, "I don't want to be having this conversation right now."

And in all honesty, neither did she. It wasn't very hard to see that he was backpedaling. Harley was right – she was in the most secret of secret places. She'd seen more of the Joker than anyone else had probably even seen. The clothes he wore now had not been forced upon him by the orderlies of a mental institution, and although he wasn't exactly as unkempt and vagrantly as she imagined he would have been in his private life, he had willingly stripped away the godlike impression he'd left with her, left with Jim, and Arkham, and Batman... hell, maybe all of Gotham City.

Suddenly she was embarrassed. He'd chosen to appear like this to her, so much less remarkable than what everyone else saw, and she had tried all too hard to understand him.

Maybe it meant more to just be seen than to be understood.

"Joker, I..."

But as in most classic horror stories, the door only stayed open long enough for you to notice that it was, before it slammed closed again. The Joker pointed over his shoulder to a door, and there Harley saw a stack of boxes that were clearly recognizable – the boxes from the storage locker she had rented.

"Bathroom's through that door. Towels are under the sink."


	41. Chapter 41: Stranger

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: _Hey Guys! I'm so incredibly delighted to be posting chapter 41. It's been far too long and I'm really looking forward to seeing what guys have to say about it. As most of you know I've been going through a rough patch, personally... but with any luck getting back to posting chapters will make me feel a little more normal. Thanks so much for reading, and enjoy this MEGA-chapter. ^_~! XOXO!_

Harley's apartment lay in ruin.

The normally neat and tidy Dr. Quinzel had left a trail of debris and clues behind her, each a tiny testament to the life she had frantically run off to. Everywhere lay scraps of polished textile, cut smoothly with fabric shears. The air was scented with stale peroxide and chemical burn. Clothes had been tossed out of dresser drawers, left strewn across the floor of her bedroom – chaos surrounding a perfectly-made bed that looked as if it hadn't been slept in for years.

The bathroom was just as bad. A black towel sat in the sink, bits of it bleached out with a heavy peroxide paste that she must have used to bleach her hair. Red lipstick stains were smeared along the inside of the porcelain sink, while blotches of black eyeliner dotted and streaked over what had once been a spotless mirror.

The beaming lights outside cast an eerie glow about the place, painting everything in a blue monochrome, much the same way it had the last time he had been here. And just like then, the scene left Batman longing to save her from something she knew so very little about.

He pined for her innocence in the matter, kept wishing that the Joker could be held completely responsible for what had happened to her, but as his eyes scanned over the apartment, the premeditation became clearer and clearer. Harley had gone so far as to render sketches of the inner workings of Arkham Asylum, had crafted a suit of black and red, rendering her nearly invisible in the darkened alleys against Gotham's old-fashioned brick structures – her new home, a far cry from the white halls of her ivory tower.

A far cry from the girl who would sit huddled down against the gull wing doors of his college sports car, her legs curled up under her as if she'd been reading a book in some sultan's chair. That day, she'd managed to pull off the same romantic air with a burger and fries and a massive root beer float, her red lips wrapped around the straw, the pigment smearing itself along the white plastic.

So far and yet so close. It was a shock to him as he made his way around the apartment, how much she'd appeared to revert back to her old self - in some ways, her truer self.

Bruce remembered when she had first dyed her hair brown, after completing her undergraduate work. He had been shocked to see her in such a way. There was something about Harley that screamed out "blond bombshell", and when she had run up to him for a congratulatory hug he'd had to take a second look at her.

"_Well, you didn't actually think anyone would take a blond psychologist seriously, did you?_" she'd asked him. There was, he'd decided, something ironically honest about her bleached blond hair. It was unequivocally _her_.

Now he finally stopped in front of a window, and the blackness of the Finger River sent his reflection gazing back at him. His introspection folded in on itself, and suddenly his memories were playing back to him, like a rerun he'd seen hundreds of times before...

"You were copying off my philosophy midterm," Harley whispered to Bruce as she caught up with him in the hallway.

He was ashamed to admit it. It wasn't like Bruce to fall apart during the exams he actually showed up to, but he had to retain this credit if he wanted to move on to business school. He'd crammed all night, but somehow, when the test finally fell upon his desk, his mind went completely blank. Bruce was apprehensive about copying off the young blond, not for any moral reasons (which he was fully capable of seeing the irony in, considering that ethics had been such a large part of the exam), but because the plucky, bubbly young woman didn't really seem the type that you should copy from. She'd scribbled down her answers so fast that Bruce was rushing to keep up, using shorthand notes for most of it before going back and writing it over in plain English.

At first, he didn't know what to say to her. He scoffed internally, wondering who on Earth she thought she was, _cornering_ him like that...but after a few seconds, he decided he admired her gusto, and so he caved.

It didn't hurt that she didn't seem at all angry about it.

Bruce ran his hand through his dark brown hair, straightening the cowlick on his left side. "God, I feel bad..." he confessed. "I just... there it was staring me in the face, and I blanked."

Her sympathetic smile broadened, and she shook her head almost apologetically. "Jeez, don't worry about it! I'm just glad you didn't get caught! You would have been looking at a flunk for sure. Hell, they might have even suspended you. I hope you changed your words around enough."

That she could be that understanding confounded him. Most people would have been pissed off, some might have even reported him – but now that he thought about it, about halfway through, she'd sat up straight and readjusted her paper. He remembered being overcome with relief, as she'd just happened to move in a way that presented an easier view. Now it was clear that she'd done it on purpose.

He smiled, and extended his hand. "Bruce Wayne."

Her face dropped and her book bag slipped off her shoulder. "Oh, shit. _Seriously_? I picked a hell of a day to be nice!" She immediately took his hand in a firm handshake. "Harley Quinzel."

Her obliviousness and disbelieving gaze put an uneasy smile on his lips. She'd kind of looked at him the way people give celebrities double takes if they spot one in the market. It was too often that people heard his name and then shunned him due to his family's status, and so Bruce had secretly hoped that the name would mean nothing to her. Soon, though, her delicate features settled back into a casual glance, her smile returning to her face. Bruce was glad to see it. It was kind of hard to miss.

"Harley... like the..." he started, but she rolled her eyes and pretended to turn the handlebars of a motorcycle.

"Yeah, I know. Like the motorcycles." She shrugged casually, bobbing her head from side to side. "They were named after me, my dad's the owner."

Suddenly Bruce's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Really?" If it was true, her family's wealth probably surpassed his - but he wasn't about to call the girl a liar, he'd just met her after all, and if one thing was true of strangers and good friends, you could never call them liars.

"No, but now you now how it feels to be on the other side of that fence." She smiled, and Bruce couldn't help but smile as well. Yeah, of course it wasn't true, the brand was nearly a hundred years old, but her comment had been so spontaneous that it had caught him off guard. He'd been fooled and impressed in the span of thirty seconds, neither of which was very easy to do.

He liked this girl.

"Listen, I feel terrible. You might have just saved my skin in there. I feel like I owe you something," he confessed, shifting his book bag over his shoulder and using the same hand to ruffle his hair once again, albeit clumsily. "Could I at least buy you dinner or something?"

He was caught off guard once again as she gave him a skeptical glance and lifted her left arm to look at her watch. "Ooo... they're right, you do work fast," she chided him, but the remark left him even more confused. "You know, they're always talking about you around the sororities, but a minute and a half? That's gotta be a record."

Bruce did have a habit of taking girls out - particularly from the sororities - to get Rachel's attention (or jealousy), but he was usually turned off by the fact that the majority of the girls were exceptionally empty-headed. "Well, I usually wouldn't ask so quickly if I didn't have something to repent for. Besides, _ethically_, I think I'm at least entitled to pay back the one who saved my physical and metaphorical ass."

She only shrugged, a coy smile still playing on her lips. "Try not to think too much of it," she quipped, and then cleared her throat before quoting in a southern twang, "you can always rely on the kindness of strangers."

Bruce could only gaze back at her with the kind of marvel that men only wore when witnessing some unbelievable apparition. He feared that she would just pass him by, and now that she had fooled and impressed him, she'd also managed to leave him terribly curious. "Seriously? I feel like I owe you somehow. There's a couple places I can get into without a reservation."

But she just held her hand up and shook her head. "Really, I'm not very high maintenance, there's no need to..."

"Burger and fries, then?"

Her eyebrows piqued with interest. Most women he could tempt with just the idea of being seen in public with him. Clearly, the thought didn't concern her very much. It took a very particular kind of girl to sit in a parking lot and mow down on fatty, poorly-cooked burgers.

She contemplated it for a moment longer, her eyes narrowing – but finally, she nodded. "Alright, but wherever it is, there better be an excellent root beer float waiting for me."

He took her number, and graciously thanked her again for helping him out, and she told him to think nothing of it, and he promised to give her a call. After an experience that could have ended terribly in so many different ways, Bruce walked down the hall feeling very much like his had a horseshoe up his ass – as if he was the luckiest guy in the world.

The very next day, picking her up after a lengthy phone call, she put him at ease when she'd walked toward his car in clothes that actually did _nothing_ to impress him. She'd dressed casual, wearing a pair of black Chuck Taylor's with a set of cut-off shorts and a faded Dr. Pepper t-shirt. Her straight long blond hair was tied in a ponytail. When she jogged up to the passenger door of his sports car, she had to lean over to look at him behind the driver's seat; due to the unique design of the super car, it was located right in the middle.

Bruce pressed a button on the console, and the window lowered itself. Her soft smile broadened as she glanced over the length of the incredibly fast machine. "Ah, so this is your car, huh? I've heard this monstrosity around campus a couple times."

He ran his hands over the supple leather of the steering wheel. "Doesn't sound so bad from the inside."

"Oh, I'm sure."

Harley had to move away from the ledge of the open window as the door popped out when Bruce hit the release. It slid up automatically, revealing the strange design of the three seater car: room enough for the driver in the middle and a passenger on either side.

"Ooo..." she cooed in an impressed tone, looking around the cabin of the vehicle, amazed by its interior. "This is some crazy Marty McFly stuff, huh?"

Bruce motioned her into the car with a coy smile on his face, "Well, I don't know if I can take you to the future, but I think I might be able to manage the eight-eight miles an hour."

This car always provided such an interesting ride. It was funny to see how people reacted to being forced into such close quarters to the driver. But Harley had settled in and buckled up before Bruce had even finished his sentence, and reached up to pull the door down, the hiss of hydrolics locking the door in place.

"Alright then..." She turned to look over to him in the seat beside her, her expression overly pokerfaced. "Show me what you got then, Wayne."

Suddenly he was overcome with a machismo need to impress her. It was innate and instinctive, the way he threw the car down into gear and tore off. He got his reward when she cackled with laughter and threw her arms up over her head as if she was on her way down the sloping drop of a rollercoaster. It was so rare for him to regard a moment of pure unadulterated joy – an aspect that had been entirely lost on him beforehand. The course of his life had forced him to grow up more quickly than should have been required of him. Though he spent a great deal of his time acting juvenile in a way that was convincing to himself as well as his observers, Bruce knew in his heart of hearts that he could never be quite as authentic as this girl managed to be.

Some people were so full of life, and had this astonishing ability to let the rest of the world know it. He'd spent a collaborative fifteen minutes with this girl, and he wished, longed, _prayed_ that her seemingly constant state of euphoria was contagious.

The two of them zoomed in the sports car down the suburban surroundings of the community bordering Gotham University. Most of the large houses had been refashioned into fraternities and sororities for wealthy students, or kids with full scholarships, while most of the smaller houses had been purchased by landlords with the sole purpose of renting them out cheap to out-of-towners. Bruce, of course, leased a condo during the school year before returning to the Palisades in the Summer.

On the way to their destination, Harley explained that her mother lived in the city, but she took the role in the sorority when she'd received a full scholarship.

"I mean, I'm not a moron," she told him, "the only reason I got pledged is because I'm blond and I don't weigh over a buck-thirty-five." Scoffing, she brushed her bangs out of her eyes, which she rolled with considerable cynicism. "Honestly, I think they hate my guts. I'm not huge into philanthropy. Not that any of _them_ are. The guys are just jocky blowhards, and the girls are stuck-up catty bitches. They just put on appearances to make sure they look good to academic commissions when their grades can't speak for themselves."

"And yours do?" Bruce asked nonchalantly as he turned into a parking lot of an old drive-in burger joint, where carhops on rollerskates moved quickly and gracefully between cars.

"Well, your were copying off of me, weren't you?" she shot back, with a piqued brow and a weak smile.

Fair enough, she did have a point there. Bruce offered her his own weak smile before leaning over and into the other passenger seat by the opposite window. He didn't feel too guilty about his small exploitation of her intellect anymore - she'd done her very best to try to relieve him of it, and he supposed that taking her out was completely unnecessary. But it seemed that even though it was water under the bridge, she still couldn't help but bring it up again.

Typical woman. And yet not.

There came a tap on the window as a young woman on rollerskates leaned over to look into the vehicle. Harley's face turned to sheer befuddlement when her eyes fell upon the girl, another blond, whose expression was focused completely on her.

Apprehensively, Bruce lowered the window.

"Harleen?" the girl asked. There was an element of surprise in her voice that caused Harley to peer down at her hand to inspect her fingernails. "What the hell are you doing in a car with Bruce Wayne?"

He'd seen this girl at Frat parties before. She had been hopelessly drunk, and had tried her very hardest to encapsulate every feature that prepubescent young men might have found attractive... and surely some Frat boys had. A deaf man could have heard the acidity in her tone, and Bruce was about to step into the conversation to defend the girl he hardly knew when Harley slid into the driver's seat and leaned over him, her forearms planting on the bottom of the window frame. Bruce couldn't help but blush, and he leaned back as far as he could in his seat.

"Tonya! Wow! You have a job!" Harley called out enthusiastically. "And here I was thinking that you were about as useful as a cock-flavoured lollipop. Now, why don't you get out your little notepad and scribble down a Mama Burger, an order of rings, a root-beer float, and..." She turned to Bruce and gave him a look.

"Uh..." he stammered, "same... swap out fries and a root-beer straight up. No ice."

Swiftly turning back to a clearly pissed-off Tonya as she was scribbling down their order, Harley raised her brows, "Did you get all that, or do you need me to repeat it?" she asked, and when Tonya get her a snotty look, Harley raised her hand to interject again. "Oh, and by the way, I got mean taste buds for human saliva, so one goober and I guarantee, I'll make it worth your while." She turned back to Bruce. "You got lawyers, right?"

He only smiled broadly at her, and tilted his head back to look through the sunroof of the car.

Tonya popped her gum and nodded, then started skating back toward the door. "Careful with that gum now, dear!" Harley called after her. "On those skates, we both know how you get when you try to do two things at once!"

She slid back over and into her passenger seat, sighing heavily as she pressed her back against the door. Then she opened her window by hitting the switch with a delicately outstretched index finger.

"What the hell was that all about?" Bruce asked, still leaning back in the passenger seat, half impressed and half dumbfounded. He'd seen a catfight before, but nothing like the heated, sharp-tongued insults that Harley had hurled at her like she'd been pitching a no-hitter. He vowed to himself at that moment never get into a bout of verbal fisticuffs with the girl.

"Yeah..." she cooed. "I'm sorry you had to see that. She's one of my sorority sisters. I told you they didn't like me very much. Maybe if this was still high school we'd get along great. But I'm not a kid anymore. I'm actually trying to take school a little more seriously."

He had to admire that, considering _he_ didn't take school very seriously at all. As much as he hated to admit it (and as much as the world appeared to know it), Bruce kind of had a free ride. He'd graduate, probably get a job managing Wayne Enterprises as CEO, and spend the rest of his days in philanthropy as his father had. But still, Tonya's reaction to Harley being in his car was so unprovoked that it required a bit of an explanation.

"Doesn't make any sense why she would want to attack you for being here," he said, but Harley only gave him an expression that sent him searching for an exact measurement of his naiveté.

"Oh, she doesn't care that I'm here." She tilted her head to the side before pointing a very defiant finger at him. "She cares that I'm here with _you_."

When Bruce offered only a bemused expression, she went on to clarify. "She's a sorority pinhead, Bruce. She's not going to school to broaden her horizons or make a career for herself. She's here hoping that she'll find a man who's interested in doing it for himself so she can go along for the ride."

His face grew skeptical. "Mm... I wouldn't be so sure about that. This is the Nineties, after all."

Harley wasn't at all deferred by his lack of belief. "Of course I'm sure! I'm not saying the same is true for all women, but women like her..." But here Harley paused and gestured to Tonya, who'd come back around with a tray. She handed off their food wordlessly as they sat in the car before skating away in long-strides, as if happy to be leaving. "Side note, just want to say that it takes a very special guy to eat a hamburger in a car like this."

Bruce smiled and nodded. "A-thank you. But really, you don't think that the whole 'equality of the sexes' thing really took hold?"

"Oh, I'm not saying that. Certainly there are a lot more independent, ambitious women nowadays then there were, say... forty years ago. But they're not as common as you'd think. Particularly in your world," she told him bluntly, before taking a bite out of her burger.

The comment caused Bruce to furrow his brows in offense and confusion. "Well, what do you mean by that?" He expected an honest answer. After having spoken with her for this long, he didn't expect that she would start censoring herself now.

"I mean the reason why Tonya was so mad that I was in your car and she wasn't is because _you_ are the Holy Grail of her existence. Her, half of the other women who attend this school, hell... you occupy this city. You're young, ambitious, wealthy, handsome. Bachelor of the year. Fully equipped to allow them to go shopping downtown every single day. But _I'm_ in here... and she sees that as a waste," Harley explained, rather passionately, and then wrapped her red lips around the straw of her root beer float.

He was still confused, but loved this sense of enlightenment that was slowly creeping up toward his brain. "A waste? Why?"

"Because I'd never use anyone for their money." Here she sighed and shrugged her shoulders, taking another sip from the drink before cautiously placing it on the floor of the car. "I suppose I'm a romantic... which is outdated."

There was a moment of silence that passed between them. In that moment, the flare of neon light from the restaurant lit up her blue eyes, and he couldn't help but feel something unlock in him. The well-practiced playboy exterior just didn't work here. His charisma felt out of place, just deflated around her. It made him dreadfully uncomfortable, and supremely vulnerable, and the nudity made his skin tingle with the sheer rarity of the situation.

He liked it.

After a few more seconds of her distant silence, she turned on some kind of energetic switch inside herself and glanced back over to him. "Enough about me, what about you?"

Bruce might have otherwise considered the question a deflection from a pretty interesting comment, but it was hardly worth getting into that in a conversation over burgers in a sports car. He shrugged, using his forefinger to angle the straw toward his mouth and take a long sip before speaking again. "Well, hard to say. Finish my undergrad here, maybe head off to business school somewhere. Princeton, maybe..."

Here she arched a brow and offered him a cheeky smile. "You have the grades to get into Princeton?" she asked, with a light air of feigned chagrin lingering in the back of her throat.

"Do I need them?" Bruce asked. The two of them shared a laugh that settled again into a silence that stretched in between them like the hallway of a Hitchcock film. It was beginning to unnerve him a little bit, but not nearly much as her next question.

"Why do you do that?" she asked dishearteningly, her brows furrowing into a concerned glance. Her lips had been pulled wide to accentuate her confusion.

While she did, Bruce himself tried to act confused, looking off and away. "What do you mean?"

"Act like someone that you're clearly not." Harley, it seemed, didn't take issue with discomfort, and powered through the next awkward sentence. "I don't need to know a lot about you to realize you're full of shit." Her expression softened before she continued. "I don't know... call it woman's intuition, or good judge of character, but I refuse to believe that someone with your kind of upbringing lacks any discernible depth."

Bruce could feel anger flare up inside him. He twitched awkwardly against the backrest of the passenger seat, his discomfort plainly obvious in the face of someone who was, essentially, a stranger to him. She'd been right, though. That was the really tricky part. The question hardly had enough time to circulate inside his mind before his mouth opened and the words came out. "Well, money doesn't always generate clout."

She twisted her features slightly once again, angling her neck to aid her in a contemptuous glance. "Oh please... If you were looking win the argument you just shot yourself in the foot."

_Since when were we arguing? _But before Bruce had another moment to collect his thoughts and respond, she was tearing through another of the line of breadcrumbs to his personality that he'd mistakenly left behind him.

"The only thing you've done to dangle your wealth in front of me is drive around in this car. You could have taken me out for Cristal and Scotch, wined me and dined me, which is the very calling card of the playboy that you and so many others claim you are – but you didn't. You opted for the low-key stuff when I told you I wasn't high-maintenance. Burgers, fries, and a really fast car." She'd leaned forward during her on-the-spot testimonial, and now leaned back suddenly to press her spine along the door and the window, sitting sideways in the seat to get a better look at him while he tried bury himself in between the cracks of the chair he sat in.

To his chagrin, she continued. "So, I guess yeah, you're right, money doesn't generate clout. You generated it for yourself, and I was smart enough to pick up on it. There's no shame in that, only opportunity."

"I don't see myself as someone who holds a lot back," he lied. Bruce never really took the time or energy to share anything that truly mattered to people. There were a select few in his life that me maintained good relations with. Alfred was of course one, and Rachel was another to a certain extent, though her presence in his life was absolutely minimal right now. The two exchanged contact information whenever one of them moved or changed phone numbers. There had been Christmas cards, birthday cards, things that could not be skipped in the social circles they found themselves in. Bruce was alone... felt alone. It lent him a darkness to retreat into, and gave him the same sense that a wild animal must have when a blindfold is thrown over their eyes to calm them.

Bruce's untouched sense of self left him calm, but blind in a world where he otherwise might have been thrashing about in anger.

"What are you?" he asked now, with a tone bordering malevolence in each word. "A journalism student or something?"

"Psychology, actually."

And the first words to float through Bruce's head were _Oh shit..._

There was no telling whether or not she was actually good at her job, or rather her future job, but given the way she'd already managed to penetrate the nuances of his playboy personality, chances were that she had a very decent handle of how to further disarm him. That was enough to assure him that she was capable.

Bruce was silent for a moment, then nodded in a kind of melancholy way as he gazed down at the half eaten burger in his hand, a shock of his brown hair shielding his eyes from hers. "Well then," he started, "for Psychology, I'd say you're in the right place."

"Don't worry... I'm not going to sit here and try to pick apart your brain. I'm not a doctor, there's no reason for me to try to do that. I'm just curious, really."

"Curious about what?" Bruce asked, not moving a muscle, though his eyes had flicked up to her, watching her carefully from behind the veil of well-maintained hair.

"How the world could be your oyster, and yet you make everyone believe that you're a douchebag."

He'd never really seen it that way. Personally, Bruce never would have gone so far as to call himself a douchebag, but maybe she was right. The facade had gone on far too long, and Bruce had often wondered how long he could go on without opening up to someone before the illusion became real, and the douchebag worked itself into his DNA. Sometimes he wondered if life would have been easier that way.

"I'm not a douchebag," he said bluntly.

Harley nodded in agreement. She took a large bite of her burger and shielded her lips with her hand, chewing while she spoke. "I know you're not. Classic defense mechanism. Anyone who's ever watched a courtroom drama will tell you that," she explained, and swallowed before taking a sip of her float through its straw. "Seriously, that's nothing to be concerned about... everyone's a bit guarded from time to time. The more important question isn't 'why am I hiding?' it's '_what_ am I hiding?' because the 'what' is infinitely more important than the 'why'. Everyone hides for the same reason – to protect themselves."

She was right... and how. Everyone kept themselves under wraps, wearing masks to hide the way the really felt. It was the same reason why the fat guy in class was usually always the funniest guy. "You want me to tell you, a perfect stranger, what I'm hiding."

"Why not?" she asked. "Who's better to tell? The thing with strangers is that often, they're nicer to you than a good friend could ever be. Why do you think people hold doors open for others, or why you're more apt to take it seriously if someone you don't know gives you a compliment? Strangers actually listen, instead of just waiting for their turn to come up so they can give you their opinion. Strangers are the great untapped emotional resource, my friend," she said, and leaned over to steal one of his fries. "If it makes you feel any better, you don't need to ever talk to me again after tonight."

Bruce looked up at her sharply. "Why would I do that?"

She shrugged, covering her mouth and speaking in a slightly muffled tone. "I dunno...sometimes when you share something personal with someone, it can be difficult to look them in the face again."

Well, he couldn't help but agree with that. But then, that usually meant you'd shared with the wrong person. He might not have known her well, but Bruce didn't feel that way about her. There was no sense of impending shame, no hesitation beyond holding up appearances.

It wasn't that he didn't want to talk to her. It was that he didn't really want to talk to anyone.

"I'm very..." he began, and held his breath as he tried to determine exactly what the emotion was. "Angry. I'm very angry."

That must have caught her off guard, because she stared back at him wide-eyed for a long moment. Immediately, she wiped her mouth with a napkin and shifted into therapist mode. "You...don't really strike me as an angry young man. You must have been doing a better job at covering things up than I had imagined." Offering him a weak smile, she motioned to him. "And here comes the inevitable question: What are you so angry about?"

Maybe to the rest of the world, Bruce Wayne spent his life on easy street, but that wasn't and had never been the case. What had started out as sadness and loneliness in his youth had morphed into anger, resentment, and a thirst for revenge. His thoughts had taken him to dark places, and no one had so openly asked him to bring them to the surface.

He furrowed his brows, refraining from eye contact, and somewhere deep inside found the fortitude to tell her. "Um...when I was young, my parents were murdered."

God, was this the first time he'd actually said it?

Harley looked at him with a consoling glance before it had slid into an expression of epiphany. She clucked her tongue and sighed. "_Shit. _ I knew that. It's amazing what you forget sometimes when you actually talk to someone, you know? I remember once, years ago in high-school, asking someone if his mother was swinging by to pick him up, knowing that his mother had died some years before..." She shook her head, "I guess I lack forethought...Jesus, I'm sorry..."

"No..." he whispered absently, looking off. "I'm glad you asked. I don't know if I've ever told anybody before. People always just kind of know." There was a kind of relief from actually hearing the words come out of his mouth. It felt like a dose of reality mixed with a spine-tingling wave of freedom.

"I think you have a right to be angry..." she told him solemnly, sliding into the driver's seat.

When he opened his mouth to speak next, the voice that emerged was dark, monotone, seemingly drained of emotion. "You do?"

Sucking on her bottom lip, she nodded several times, then tilted her head to make a point. "On the other hand, there is a great deal of opportunity to be had in what's happened."

Bruce had found the comment a little biting, though it didn't take long for his sensitivity over it to pass. It had been a lot time ago, after all, and he should have had adequate time by now to reflect upon how he could turn such a negative situation into something positive... though he hadn't actually gotten to that point yet. The grieving process had been a little longer than expected.

"They say every man is a sum total of his reaction to experience." The words came so simply and beautifully from her mouth that Bruce wished he could steal them right out of the air, put them in a jar, and keep them to himself. The relief he felt then must have registered on his face on some level, because after she glanced at him she went on. "I think the question you really need to ask yourself should be 'what kind of a man do I want to become?'"

Bruce thought about it for a moment, and could only reflect on the man who'd come down the broken well to retrieve him. "I don't..." Here, his voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. "I don't know if I understand what you mean."

She readjusted herself in the driver's seat and glanced out the large, reflective windshield. "What I mean is that you have a real opportunity here to control the way you react to this situation – and by situation, I mean _life_. Is it sad that you lost your parents at such a young age? Yes! Absolutely." As she moved through her explanation, he noticed her hands moved wildly, shrugging and gesturing toward nothing. She was so animated. Bruce couldn't help but let a gentle smile cross over his mouth.

"What I'm saying is that you have a choice. You can succumb to grief, and live out a life of inaction. You can go through the motions, and allow people to believe that you're this Casanova playboy type because it's easy...or you can take your life, and use the influence of your parents to really make it count for something." She turned back to look at him and smiled. "God knows you have the resources."

With his coy smile and gentle expression, he nodded to her.

She smiled back and gave his knee a friendly slap. "Besides! Look at all the good your family has done for this city. It's an uphill journey, but it would be heartbreaking to see their son lose his way."

After that, the two of them had talked for a while longer. Bruce had spoken about his parents briefly and reflected on fond memories for the first time in what had been a long while. He remembered her complaining about eating too much and how she'd placed her hand over her stomach, which didn't come close to a whisper of protrusion. He'd laughed at her as she'd pretended to vomit out the passenger side window, and snickered as he watched Harley make fun of Tonya once more when she'd come to collect their things.

Driving her back to the sorority house, he'd promised to call her, though he never had. When he'd seen her in the halls afterward, or at the library, she'd never made him feel bad about it, though he felt it now as he returned to the Batcave, the Tumbler coming to a halt just beyond the veil of the waterfall.

Harley's advice had been sound. Though he hadn't quite paid her much mind when he had contemplated murdering Joe Chill, he'd always remembered that quote of hers, that he wished so badly to keep under his pillow

"_Every man is the sum total of his reaction to experience."_

She might have been the only person who had ever told him that he was in direct control of those emotions he'd spent so long spinning out of control with. And now she was gone, spinning out of control with hers...

It wasn't until he was sitting back in his swivel chair amidst a bank of computer monitors that Bruce finally came out of his reverie. Alfred's voice rang out in the rocky, hollow space, clear as a bell. "Ah, there you are..." he started, the gentle clinking of a silver tea tray came along with his cheerful greeting. "I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to send in a description of your car to the brigade."

Half a chuckle escaped Bruce's throat as he absently shook his head back and forth. "No... no waffling through Gotham's seedy underbelly tonight," he said with a lopsided grin. "I was, um..." He paused for a moment, glancing down at the Rubik's cube he'd been idly spinning between his thumb and forefinger. "Reflecting."

"I was beginning to wonder where you had gotten to," Alfred said in a concerned tone. "Though I hadn't exactly started watching the..."

Bruce looked up to the old man, much as he had in his youth when he had known himself to be in trouble. "I was at Dr. Quinzel's apartment."

"Ah..." Alfred's tone was less than impressed, but expectant, as if he'd somehow known that Bruce would eventually make his way there. "And what did you find?"

Mulling it over with a flattened pair of pursed lips, Bruce only shook his head again while his friend poured him a steaming hot cup of tea from a silver decanter. "Not much...nothing in the way of clues that I didn't already have. It just got me thinking about her."

"I think you mean to say 'brooding'," Alfred commented, handing the still-costumed Bruce a cup of tea, completing what was always a comical image in the eyes of the old man.

"Yeah, I suppose you're right." Lifting the cup to his lips, Bruce looked off as if to slip into a pensive mood once more, but then turned abruptly to Alfred. "If only there was some way to reach out to her. Harley was always so receptive to emotional appeal. It's not her I'm worried about, I know something is still there... but who can say for sure about the Joker."

And although he hadn't been expecting it after such a long night that had eventually bled, as evenings always do, into daylight, Alfred brought him back to a reality that so was robbed of the possibilities that Bruce had often hoped for. "What makes you think that there's any part of your friend left, hmm?" he asked, even as Bruce looked up at him with an expression between heartbreak and disillusion. "With all due respect, Sir... I think you should reconsider everything you ever knew about Dr. Quinzel, and start worrying about her more than you would have worried about the Joker..."

"Why would you say that?" he asked, more curious than anything else.

"Because she knows a thing or two about Bruce Wayne, and if she's any good at what she does, she might have a trick or two to bring down the walls of Batman you've spent the last ten years of your life building up." Cautiously, Alfred lifted the silver tray up into his arms once again and turned toward the sliding glass panel, and back to the house from where he had come. "And if there's one thing I know for sure, Master Bruce..."

Bruce's eyes turned up from his reflection in the translucent orange tea.

"If there's one thing more dangerous than a man with unconventional ideas," Alfred said, "it's the woman that loves him."


	42. Chapter 42: Coffee

**Note from the Author: Here it is! Long awaited, I'm sure, but I'm so happy to know that there are people who will be reading this who have been patiently waiting for my return. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you, and how hard the last few months have been, but I've returned, and soon I'll be back to posting every single week! **

**Enjoy!**

Harley had amazed even herself. As her fragile little world seemed to come shattering down all around her with the force of a sledgehammer, somehow she managed to sleep – and well at that! It wasn't that the Joker's makeshift bedroom was very comfortable; quite the opposite in fact. Messy rooms always looked so romantic in dimmed light. Somehow they seemed casual, the random drapery of men's clothes strewn carelessly about the room left her lovingly drunken perceptions of the Joker intact. She stripped out of her leather catsuit and slid in between the threadbare, unwashed sheets that smelled like him. Gasoline and paraffin wax – simple, deadly, distinct.

But in the daytime, when the light crept into every crevice of the room, it revealed its true form. Gone was the romance from the night before, and instead the reality of the room, of the warehouse, struck her as though someone had just pitched a sack of potatoes into her gut.

What backwards transformation was this?

What an incredibly disappointing development. Here she was, lifted above the organized chaos that scrambled beneath her. Skids and pallets covered in ammonia, drums of gasoline, and fertilizer lay arranged in uniform rows, adjusted along the warehouse floor. From the relative calm of the Joker's dusty, unmade bed, Harley could hear him shuffling around the place, the gentle bouncing of his footsteps on the scuffed hardwood floor of this shaky mezzanine that he called a home.

Would he really call it _home_ if it was anything more than that? Harley had indeed half-expected him to be living in a cardboard box under an overpass. He hardly seemed the type of man to take much with him beyond the clothes on his back. Although this place was hardly more than that, the Joker was very obviously insulted when she extended this suggestion.

Well, the man obviously had his pride. He had made damn sure that she understood at least that much.

Since his outburst, Harley had left very little to chance in the way of potential confrontations. In short, she left him to his own devices and he left her to hers. Although...her devices consisted of laying in bed, daydreaming herself away in quiet introspection. But hey, it had been enough to pass the time.

Maybe the thing that disappointed Harley the most was not the fact that the Joker had his panties in a bunch, but that, even with all the freedom she assumed that she would have here, she was still very much a prisoner. Except this time, instead of her apartment and the asylum, she was trapped in a twenty-by-twenty-foot metal platform suspended high about the floor of a warehouse, with only a small strip of light filtering in from the grimy windows to comfort her.

The room only faintly mentioned the idea of sleep. Being here with him had only caused her mind to wander, and perhaps that was the underlying cause of her sudden aggression toward him. The last few weeks had been filled with complex scenarios that didn't seem to make any sense at first, but when she was given the time to sit and silently contemplate, Harley discovered that her mind was capable of some amazing things. This big, messy knot of indignation was slowly beginning to unravel - and as it did, the outcome terrified her more and more. She had committed unspeakable crimes for the sake of a man who was emotionally incapable of repaying her.

Yet somehow, as much as she tried to convince herself otherwise, Harley didn't mind that the Joker would never pay her back. There was something maternal in her caring for him. At least, she assumed it was maternal. She couldn't wrap her head around another instance where she would sacrifice herself so readily for someone else.

Okay. So maybe she had romanticized the whole idea of the _running-away-with-the-Joker_ thing... but who would blame her? Some of the most exciting jobs in the world turned out to be boring ninety percent of the time...maybe this was just another instance of that. While the idea of having adventures side by side with him still lingered in her mind, she wondered if it would ever happen, the image of it slowly spiraling down into the sewer of her psyche.

The hazy, early morning light that entered the room made her feel as though she were living in a dream. Every color appeared muted, somehow quieted, washed out with a pale gray hue, like mist rolling down a suburban street. Though she had been awake, her eyes only now opened to the sudden sound of the televisions downstairs all turning on. The barrage of noise immediately quieted into hushed tones.

Harley's analytical brain shifted into gear, drawing ideas and conclusions from that simple action. The volume had been left high from last night, but he'd immediately turned them down. There could have been any number of reasons why. Maybe he had just woken up himself and hadn't adjusted to loud noise yet. Perhaps he'd had it set to the wrong channel, or he was selecting the closed captions as he usually did whenever he was watching more than one station at a time.

She attempted to rifle through every option besides the school-girl thought that her mind clung to.

_He thinks you're still sleeping..._

Harley immediately buried her face into her pillow. _Bullshit! He wouldn't care_. Why would he care? Putting his motives into perspective was an impossible task on a regular day, to say nothing of the emotionally turbulent ones that had followed his escape from Arkham, and hers from the regular world.

Somehow, in the midst of the drama that had surrounded them over the last few weeks, Harley realized that she had begun to treat him like the villain that everyone assumed he was, after all the time she had spent trying to convince the world otherwise.

She sat up, her blond mess of hair disheveled from a terrible night's sleep. Glancing from side to side in forced alertness, she gathered herself for a moment and then rose silently from bed. She rearranged her hair in front of a cracked mirror which had been leaning against the wall by a large, over-used armoire. Dark smudges surrounded her eyes from old caked makeup and running mascara, the corners of her eyes dotted with dried salt. Adjusting the straps of her black tank top, she slipped into a pair of white linen pants, pulling the drawstring around her flat, empty stomach.

Clattering down the stairs, one foot after the other, she bounced down into the main living area as if it had been a warm and toasty Sunday morning with eggs, bacon, coffee, and cartoons waiting for her. While the cartoons were waiting in the lower right hand screen as they had before, a good breakfast was asking a little much.

Thankfully, the coffee wasn't.

As she stood at the bottom of the steps, she looked to the Joker. He glanced over his shoulder and back to her, but idly, and then turned back to the television, turning up the volume on the cartoon he had been watching.

_Shit..._ she thought. She assumed her idea about the volume had been correct as she skulked toward the strangely pieced together kitchen area, opening cupboards in an attempt to find a clean mug.

"The one over the sink, on the left," she heard from behind. "Don't use the big black one. It leaks."

Harley couldn't help but smile to herself. "Then why keep it?"

"Why keep anything?"

Personally, she'd always hated it when patients answered with another question, but as this wasn't exactly Harley's deepest line of questioning, she let it slide. She pulled out the large black mug to inspect it. It did in fact have a very clear white line scored into the black coating which flourished toward the bottom, reminding her very much of his scars. With a cheeky grin, Harley very purposefully dropped the cup, which might not have otherwise broke had it not been for the developing crack in the side of the porcelain.

"Oops..." she said nonchalantly. "I broke it."

The Joker's head had shot up at the sound of the cup breaking, although he didn't turn. After her cool and somewhat lazy reply, Harley watched as he appeared to bounce slightly, shaking his head in concealed laughter. She could always tell when he was smiling, even when she wasn't looking at him. His cheekbones had this way of protruding from his face, making the bridge of his glasses slide down his nose. The Joker had the kind of smile that you could see from any angle.

Harley lifted a mug labeled "World's Best Grandpa", and poured the thick dark coffee into it, and again he chimed out, "Sugar's in a bag under the coffee machine...no cream. I don't drink that shit."

"How do you know I take cream in my coffee?" she asked him, taking careful steps around the shattered mug and toward the sofa that he was always present on. She coiled herself up in the middle cushion, closer to him than she had been before. With both of her long-fingered hands around the cup, her pose made her look like a sitting Buddha, eyes trained on the television displaying the _Animaniacs _cartoon that she would watch with her little cousins during Sunday morning brunch.

He watched her as she sat down next to him, shifting at her proximity. "I don't like dairy... I was always able to smell it in your coffee, on your breath."

"Mmm... how Hannibal Lecter of you."

There was a distinct, though short, laugh before he shot back, "Watch yourself, that's high praise in my circle."

"I don't like cream in my coffee," Harley told him, bluntly enough for him to turn toward her in curiosity. "It just comes out of the machine that way... and in my opinion, creamy coffee is better than no coffee at all."

The Joker blinked behind the slight reflection of his glasses, and furrowed his brows for a quick second. Harley imagined it must have been troubling for him to be confronted by the revelation that he had been wrong about something so simple for so long. But, there was a lesson to be had in it.

"You see... I thought I knew a thing or two about how you lived, or the kind of person you really were. You thought I took cream in my coffee. Maybe we don't know as much about one another as we think." Finally turning to look at him with her wide raccoon eyes, she offered him a gentle shrug. "We were both in a very controlled setting, under very particular and peculiar circumstances. You want to learn about a lion, you don't put it in a cage and assume it's going to act naturally. You observe it in its natural habitat."

"Mmm..." the Joker cooed, raising a brow in bemusement, "I'm still your little pet project?"

"No more than I'm yours."

Such a casual, simple suggestion, but it had captured his attention entirely. Where the cartoons on the television had been the main detractor from their conversation, they were now just a murmur of background noise in what was turning into the first real conversation they'd had since they were only patient and doctor.

Her tone had been neither snide, nor cutting, but he looked at her in that skeptical way that he had, his dark eyes narrowing on her. "_My_ pet project?" he finally asked.

"Well, what did you think? That I just faithfully trotted after you into the dark like some lost little puppy?" This time an obvious tone of leeriness laced over her voice. "I really hope you don't think I'm that mindless." Harley's offense was superficial, knowing that he would move to correct her even as she turned her gaze away from him, reaching up to scratch the back of her neck in passiveness.

And Harley knew that it was going to take a little more of an ego stroke for him to admit in his willingness to occupy her as a accomplice. Happily, she obliged, inspecting her fingernails with an aloof glance after she had withdrawn them from the nape of her neck. "I'm a grown woman, and I can and _have _made decisions for myself. I made decisions based on what you've told me over the past six months, and I've _chosen _to be here. Not because of money, or freedom, or any ideologies that you've tried to sell through the 'subtle manipulation tactics' that the media says that you've employed upon me."

When she turned back to him, it was without the added stoicism of her last comment. Her normally bright visage took on a pitiful edge as she glanced at him over her shoulder, heaving a large sigh as his gaze danced away from hers. She shrugged, lifting her left hand and taking another delicate sip of her black coffee. "Pet project or not, I would have hoped that you at least thought of me as more than just another mindless groupie."

The Joker rolled his eyes, slinging an arm across the back of the sofa. "There're no groupies..." he muttered, with what was the most honest look he'd given her since before they left Arkham. Smacking his lips wearily, his half lidded gaze moved across the televisions and back over to where she sat, her back arched lazily and elbows on her knees as she awaited some kind of a reply.

"Listen to me..." His voice was quite gruff before he cleared his throat, his eyes flashing as he thought of the words to make his point. "Obviously, what we've got here is failure to communicate."

"Those are some awfully big words coming from you, Cool Hand Luke."

Harley didn't want to admit it, but her heart fluttered around wildly in her chest when he offered up an amused smile to the reference. "What do you want from me? You think I was going to make it easy on you?" He rolled his eyes again and looked away from her again. "Harley..."

"No, _you _listen to me," she cut him off, placing her mug down on the edge of the coffee table. She tucked her legs beneath her and turned in her kneel to face him, forcing the Joker to look at her. "I made a choice, and I'm here... and I'm not going anywhere unless you make that decision for me."

He wasn't giving her the softest look - not by a long shot. But he _was _making eye contact, and he was listening, and that was by far the best that Harley could have asked for. "You're right, though," she went on. "You never have - and you never will - lead a very easy conversation. No one's ever challenged me as much as you have. So... sue me, okay? I'm a little caught off guard by these subtle attempts at humanity. You brought me here, you've harbored me as a fugitive, you've let me sleep in your bed, and you've done your best to protect me, and I dismissed all that because I couldn't wrap my head around this..."

Okay, maybe there was a little softening, but it was only the kind that Harley could see; no one else could see those minute shifts in the Joker's demeanor and appearance. Then, as she struggled for a description, he finally grinned.

"It's kind of like a doll house, you know?" He made it sound like more of a rhetorical question, so she just slung her own arm over the back of the sofa, and casually crossed over his own arm as she let him finish. "From the outside everything looks kind of normal, but it's not."

"Oh, no... it's not normal." She shook her head in agreement. "Maybe if this was a brownstone in midtown it would look a little more normal." He smiled again, and her heart rippled in her chest like finches beating their delicate wings around in a cage. "That's what I like about you though..." She beamed one of her large smiles back at him, his eyes flashing between her teeth and the rest of her face. "You're not normal, nothing about you is normal, and you'd never want it to be... believe me."

"Oh yeah?" he asked, his mouth barely moving as his eyes casually scanned over her face and down her neck. "Normal is bad?"

"Ha!" It wasn't like him to ask her for her opinion on something so trivial. "Normal isn't bad so much as it is boring. I've been normal all my life."

"You think you're like everyone else, huh?" Taking hold of his slender-framed glasses at the ear joint, he slipped them off his face to inspect her with the theatrical look that he normally saved for more confrontational conversations.

Harley instinctively broke eye contact. She hadn't meant to, but the action seemed unavoidable. Her inner psychologist pointed directly to an unlikely proclivity toward submission, but she was hardly shocked. Harley probably found it far more intimidating than he did, but when the Joker looked at you this way, it was very difficult to stare back. Although the action was overly subdued of her, she tried her best to play it off casually, coupling it with an uneasy chuckle. "Well... I don't know if I'm just like everyone else, but I've not led the most exciting life."

"Until now..." he finished.

Tilting her head, she gazed off once more before leaning over and reaching for her coffee cup, clasping her fingers around the warm handle and bringing it up to her mouth before she confessed, "I don't know if I would have called this whole episode exciting. More like...stressful, and confusing."

The Joker offered her a strange look, then turned his attention back to the television screens. He muted the cartoons and brought up the volume on one of the news stations, where a reporter was speaking with a psychological expert about average citizens doing outlandish and crazy things. "I'd be excited if I were you," he began, gesturing toward the screen. "You've got hundreds of thousands of people reconsidering their options, you know? You've been lied to, manipulated, and put in line. You weren't going to take it anymore. You are a symptom of a sick society, but the thing is, you're also the _cure_." He gave a heavy shrug. "Okay, so maybe me getting out of Arkham was a nice by-product of that... but you stood up for yourself and all of the other '_sheep_' in this city. You stood out above them. _That's_ what makes you different. That's what's _always_ made you different."

"I wish that would make me feel better about what I've done..." As Harley stared into her coffee, her black reflection bounced back to her, distorted by the gentle trembling of her hands. The sight of the shadows and dark circles around her eyes disturbed her to the point that had to look away. "I may not be normal... but I never thought that I would turn into _this_."

He furrowed his eyebrows. "Into what?"

And her response came in the faintest of whispers, her hands dropping to her knees where she cradled the mug and its sweltering contents, her nebulous reflection. "Into a murderer."

Maybe there was no way around this despair. Maybe it had been the root of it all. Before she had left her apartment for the last time, she was so full of rage, and it was Harleyquinn who had emerged from those feelings of malevolence and hatred. Even though she felt like a completely different person, it was Harley Quinzel left with the emotional wreckage - wreckage that sought to turn the Joker into a villain, even though he was the only one who would offer her sanctuary in this criminal world she had entered. This wreckage was the throne that Harleyquinn reclined on, reveled in, prayed to like a god for it to simply swallow up her turbulent, conflicted soul so that only the darkness would remain. The wreckage was her home now, and how could she find peace in a place like that?

There was a long pause that followed, and then a long, heaving sigh from him. She didn't look up, and continued to watch her darkened image, skewed and evil, as if looking into the remnants of a shattered mirror. Suddenly, his hand covered the top of the cup, blocking the haunting image from her view, and the shock of his intervention made her inclement blue eyes meet with his once again. Inhaling, he moved the mug out of her hands and back to a coaster on the coffee table.

"The first time always fucks with you," he said, tapping his temple. "Doesn't matter what was wrong with you in the first place... it still fucks with you."

She blinked a few times, but eventually had no other choice but to nod in agreement. While she was sure that 'Harleyquinn' was alive and well in the maddening recesses of her mind, it was true - it was fucking with her.

The silence that passed between them this time wasn't as long as the one that preceded it. It was just long enough for him to hit the mute button on the news and turn back to her, his hands simultaneously resting on his thighs with a bit of a slap. "What if I told you I appreciated it? Like you'd done me a favor or something, would that make you feel better about it?"

The way he'd said it was so casual, so nonchalant, that at first she had a hard time believing it. Before she could actually absorb the comment, her mouth was already opening up to say something stupid, perhaps a question that she might have asked when they were first forming their relationship. "Are you even capable of appreciation?"

A grimace appeared on his face. He turned back to the televisions, moving to reach for the remote once more. "Forget it..."

As his finger lowered to turn off the mute function, Harley felt something like a rush, akin to the feeling you get when you stand up too quickly, or arch your back too sharply in a gigantic stretch. There was this visceral inclination to hold onto him and beg him to give her some kind of peace, but the Joker wasn't a broker of peace. While the argument of his capability came into question on more than one occasion, Harley knew that he wouldn't have offered if the thought of her war-torn heart didn't impair or damage him somewhere, in some hidden, dark fissure with him. She hoped for nothing more than to find herself there, caught in the last bit of softness he had, a plant that would spring up from the moisture caught in cracked earth.

But modesty restrained her, and instead of some melodramatic display of affection, she simply placed a firm hand on his shoulder, squeezing him just enough to ensure that he heard her say, "That's not what I meant."

After a few seconds, he placed the remote back on the armrest of the sofa. His eyes hardened on the television briefly, before they swiveled toward her. He might have snapped at her if he hadn't taken a moment to seriously study her face. He took in a breath, his eyes rolling away from her to extend the very pinnacle of his sympathy. As she guessed, it was hardly enough to soothe her.

"Maybe if you said it like you meant it," she said, "I might be able to trick myself into thinking that it's true."

While his gaze remained harsh unrelenting, his crooked mouth softened into a twisted smirk. "When I tell you something, it is true," he said, as if only stating a fact. As if there was no logical way that she could doubt him.

She didn't. Not even a little bit.

"Yeah?" she asked, uncertain.

The Joker scoffed. "Have you ever done anything wrong in your entire life, Harley?"

She sat back a bit, her right hand sliding from behind his back to rest on his shoulder, where his gaze connected with it. "There have been times where I've used poor judgment."

"But on the whole, you've never really done anything wrong." This sounded like more of a statement than anything else. Poor judgment was one thing, but making a mindful decision to do something immoral had never really crossed her mind.

When she nodded in agreement, he went on. "So what has you questioning yourself this time? You've never done anything wrong, but for the first time you took a stand and did what you felt was right...you had the stones to stand up to Mr. Self-Righteous himself, Jim Gordon, and you shoved Batman's perfect little perception of himself all the way down his scheming throat. That, I appreciate. Maybe even more than springing me from what was certainly gonna to be _the chair_."

"You really mean that?" she asked softly, an affectionate, liquid quality lingering in her eyes.

The Joker must have noticed it, because he looked away very suddenly and hit the mute button on the television once again, the volume suddenly reemerging. He nodded once, almost solemnly. "Yes," he muttered. His eyes darted back to hers for an instant, but it was the wrong instant - otherwise he might not have struggled so slightly when her hand suddenly pulled him in for a quick, girlish kiss on the cheek.

"Would you like some breakfast?" she asked, her hand sliding off his shoulder, grazing his bicep before she stood to her feet.

He nodded slowly. "Sure..."

Harley smiled, winked, and swayed her hips slightly as she walked past him and around the sofa. "So, how would you like your eggs?" 


	43. Chapter 43: Wolf

Jim was tired. More than that, he was _sick_ and tired.

He sat at his wide desk in his office, the receiver of the phone pressed up to one ear, his elbow propping his chin up lazily as the phone rang and rang. He felt as though he must have heard the sound a thousand times in the last four days. Indeed, today was the fourth consecutive day that Jim had spent talking to the press, the remaining employees at the asylum, and the investigation teams in the MCU trying to get a handle on exactly what had happened. But now, no one here seemed to want to pick up the telephone.

He knew as sure as shit that his next call would do nothing more to save his soul than any other he had placed that day. The chief of Internal Affairs, Marshal Grant, had made it clear the day after the Arkham fallout that he would do everything he could to assist Jim, and that included offering up the skills of his newest - and best - official detective. "You remember Joe Callaghan, don't you?" he'd asked.

Jim did remember him, though he didn't remember Grant ever calling him _Joe_. The kid had seemed like such a newbie that it struck him strange that he'd already been promoted to detective, but he remembered the kid, and didn't want to be rude by turning down Grant's latest star.

Deep down, Jim didn't need witness accounts or the teams of investigators at his beck and call to figure out what happened. He knew what happened. He knew the night Harley Quinzel quit Arkham exactly what had happened, because he'd been there – he'd _let_ it happen. He could say nothing to stop her from walking out the door that night, he could do nothing to console her or tell her that he'd done it for the greater good. He'd painted Dent as the hero, and pointed the finger at the only true hero Gotham City had ever known.

The fiasco had sent Jim reeling. He'd come home from that first late night, after the car chase, after the investigation at the asylum, and had fallen to his knees just inside the door, sobbing like an infant into his hands. Barbara had found her way to him, and he could tell as he looked up at her from the carpeted floor that she hadn't slept a wink. The two of them stayed up all night, drinking lukewarm cups of tea, talking about life and how quickly it could change.

It seemed like just yesterday that Jim was knocking on the door of the Quinzel family home. The sun had been setting behind a thick shroud of dense rainclouds, slowly dimming the quiet residential street where Gordon had parked his squad car. After he rang the doorbell, he could hear eager steps prancing toward the front entrance.

Then he saw her. A pretty young woman, with platinum blond hair and the kind of smile that was probably driving the boys crazy. She had started talking as soon as she had opened the door, confusing him for the father that he himself had just arrested.

"Daddy, you're so silly, ringing the doorbe..." But she'd stopped and their eyes met from behind the screen door, and Jim could tell that she knew, and the look on her face had broken his heart in two.

When he'd asked if her mother was home and if he could come in, she appeared to know the drill. Indeed, Richard (or Dicky, as his friends called him) Quinzel had an impressive wrap sheet of petty crimes, with a few felony offenses thrown into the mix. All in all, he had spent the majority of his twenties in jail, but when he'd turned twenty-nine he'd met Francine, settled down, and had a couple kids. After that, he appeared to be out of the game for good.

But if there was one thing Jim knew from his career, it was that crime was a drug. When you relapsed, you were rusty, and you hit the ground hard. That was exactly what happened to Dicky. One last score to keep the family in the black for the rest of his life. It wasn't a rare crime – bank robberies were a common occurrence in Gotham City. There were anywhere between fifteen and twenty every single year.

But rarely did it involve the murder of two policemen.

Harleen had walked him into the family room, where her mother Francine was smoking a cigarette and watching the news, as every worried wife of a criminal will do when their husband hadn't come home. She was a lovely woman, but stress and cigarettes had aged her prematurely. She was maybe only forty-five, her wavy hair still black, but she looked older. Her piercing blue eyes had looked startled upon seeing Jim, and immediately welled up with tears.

Harley had looked up at him, gave him a soft, sad smile, and said "Why don't you have a seat, Officer Gordon? She'll calm down in a minute. I'll get you a cup of coffee."

When she had returned, Harley had curled up on the flowery, out-of date furniture next to her mother and rubbed her back to soothe her. Even as a rookie cop all that time ago, Jim knew that girls like her idolized their fathers. For a moment, he'd thought about asking the young girl to leave the room. He knew better when he saw how Francine had taken a deep, calming breath once her daughter was sitting next to her.

It took every ounce of strength Jim had not to crush the cup of coffee that Harley had given him as he described exactly what Dicky had done. Francine had just shaken her head, over and over again, incapable of understanding how her loving husband could murder two cops in broad daylight and cold blood. After Francine had explained that that, financially, the family had been all right, Jim himself couldn't wrap his head around it.

The photographs on the wall painted a different image of the man he had arrested that day. Sepia photographs in old woodgrain picture frames depicted the family sitting on the steps of the brownstone they called a home, smiling, their arms wrapped around each other. Another had Dicky lifting his petite daughter over his head, who was holding a medal above hers in triumph.

The photographs dotted the walls like shards of light through a dream-catcher. This family had hung their happiness all around their home, and Jim wondered silently how much of it he had crushed in that instant.

After all that, how could he not help but feel responsible?

But the only thing he could do now was get the ball rolling on determining Harley Quinzel's motives and whereabouts. With a heavy sigh, he lifted the receiver of his phone once again, pounding in the numbers to Marshal Grant. Of course, He didn't pick up, but his voice mail did, the metallic recording of his voice ringing out. _"Hello, you've reached the voice mail of chief investigator and department head Marshal Grant, Internal Affairs. I'm not able to answer your call at this time, but please leave your name and number, and I'll get back to you at my earliest convenience."_

Jim rolled his eyes at such a formal greeting. He wondered if people hated listening to them just as much as they hated recording them. "Marshal, it's Jim. Haven't heard back from your detective rookie-"

Suddenly there came a knock on the door, distracting him. "Uh... oh!" he called out when the door opened a crack and Joesph Callaghan's face poked playfully into the room, a sheepish grin on his face. "Ha! Never mind, he's just stepped in. You can disregard this message," Jim replied, attempting to mimic the formality of Marshal's greeting.

Though Jim wasn't exactly thrilled to have to play the political card and act nicey-nice with Grant's new golden boy, he was happy at least someone was giving him the time of day.

"Commissioner Gordon!" he called out enthusiastically, reaching out to take Jim's hand from the moment he stepped inside the door. He had to hand it to the kid, he was a people-pleaser. Every time he'd seen him, Joe always had a smile on his face, regardless of the situation. He found it hard to criticize Grant's decision to move him up to detective him so soon. Every thing about him just seemed to scream '_promote me!_' From his straight-toothed smile to his freshly pressed suit. This guy came to work everyday, dreaming of a bigger paycheck.

You had to be careful with people like that: they often turned into politicians.

Jim had a smile that he saved for such occasions. Barbara called it his _Minnesota Nice_ smile, meaning that if you knew what he was thinking, maybe you wouldn't have thought it was so nice. As much as he wanted to, Jim just couldn't bring himself to trust him. Maybe it was the fact that he just seemed so open, so eager to please, that it felt like he was trying to distract you with the niceties.

Certainly _no_ one could kiss this much ass.

When Jim reached out to shake young Joe's hand, he felt as though Joe could pick this old man up and fling him around the room if he wanted to. He remembered thinking, even the first time he placed eyes on him, that he would have made a mean defensive lineman. "Good to see ya again, Joe," he said politely, but he could still hear Barbara's chirping in the back of his mind.

Joe, on the other hand, was about as giddy as a freshman at the senior prom "I was so excited when Chief Grant told me that you'd be interested in working with me again! I can't tell you how much that means to me."

"Yeah, I hear you've been promoted to detective," he quipped, looking at the young man with a patronizing glance over his glasses. "That's a pretty exciting development for someone as green as you are."

"Oh, I think I might look a little greener than I actually am." He wore a broad smile as he spoke, and Jim didn't quite know how to decipher it. He was young, after all, and his over-excitement might have had a little to do with his maturity level, but the more he looked at it the more it made Jim feel like he was talking to a used car salesman.

Leaning back in his leather swivel chair, the Commissioner touched the fingertips of both hands together and began to drill the rookie detective with questions. "Most cops have to hit the pavement for at least five years before they can write their detective's exam. There's no way you've been on the beat that long."

Here Joe's smile faded into more of a snide grin, and his head tilted to the left ever so slightly. "Well, no... Commissioner, on that point you're absolutely correct. I was a beat cop for only about three years before taking the exam."

"What makes you so special?" Jim asked immediately afterward, seeing if it would catch him off guard.

But Joe answered back just as quick. "Tenacity," he said simply, that triumphant smile returning to his face.

_Tenacity_ might have been the word, but Jim couldn't help but feel that maybe you could tack on a few more...mainly '_pure shit luck_'. The grapevine had told him that responsibilities had been stacked on the young detective since his promotion. The fact that he had been fast-tracked through the exam, was already swimming in high priority cases, and was being referred to assist the commissioner on the case of the century...

Yeah, luck and someone trying to look good in IA.

"You and I both know that a cop can only work so hard in this town. And tenacity will only get you so far. Someone had to put in a referral for you to take the detective's exam a full two years early." Jim drummed his fingertips on the desk lightly as he peered at the young man over the black rim of his glasses. "Grant's staked a lot of his slow-and-steady reputation on your success, hasn't he?"

"I'm humbled and touched by the amount of faith that Chief Grant has in me. Certainly if there were more superiors who took an active interest in their subordinates, then maybe we'd have more good cops in this city," Callaghan told him abruptly, and in that dignified and idealistic tone that Dent used to have. It might have made Jim beam with pride, but knowing the things that he knew... it only made him all the more cautious.

The two men looked at each for a second more before Jim shot up from his relaxed, observant stance and started flipping through a nearby file. "So, what's your case load like? Do you have enough time to focus on a few cases at once? What are you working on right now?"

It was easy for a rookie detective to get flustered when superiors started in with the twenty questions, but Joe seemed to pick up smoothly, answering each of the questions as quickly as Jim had asked them. "Working on a few cases right now. I'm heading the internal investigations on the stolen guns from the evidence room at the MCU."

That was certainly enough to capture Jim's attention. He hadn't thought about that case at all in the last few days, though he had maintained communications with his former department about developments. You'd think that some of the officers would have complained about getting hassled yet again by Internal Affairs, but Jim hadn't heard anyone so much as curse the name of Callaghan under their breath. "Really?" Jim asked, almost skeptically. "_Heading_ the investigation?"

"Yep!" Joe proclaimed. "Chief Grant didn't see much point in keeping the case on his plate when he has so much to deal with, and now that I'm a full-blown detective, there wasn't any reason not to."

Jim knew firsthand that giving so much responsibility over to a rookie detective was usually not the best idea. It might have been idealistic, but it didn't mean much if you couldn't trust them. He'd learned that the hard way through Ramirez.

"That, along with assisting in a couple of other smaller cases... I can't say I have a full plate just yet, Commissioner." That might have been true, and internally, Jim knew he didn't have much of a choice when it came to utilizing Callaghan in his investigation of Harley's escape. Part of his job was making nice with the chiefs between departments, and seeing as he didn't really get along with the last head of Internal Affairs, Jim promised himself that this time, he'd at least try to make an effort.

"Have you at least seen the case file?" he asked, shuffling around a few papers on his desk before locating the thick folder containing pictures of evidence and notes from investigators. Jim had been buried in it for the last four days, poring over things time and time again, trying to make sense of how it had all been possible.

As soon at Jim had started talking shop, the young man's tone changed entirely. He crossed one leg over the other, and sat back in the chair. His relaxed posture did very little to subtract from his serous visage. "Chief Grant provided a copy to me, and I gave it a good looking over on the weekend. It's an incredibly troubling case...not exactly the kind of murder you can just throw officers at to canvas the neighborhood."

"Heh... no." Jim had to contain the venom welling in his throat. He wanted to be hard on the kid, correct and criticize everything he was saying. Callaghan had no experience with the Joker, and while he wasn't exactly wrong with his statement, he was also grossly underestimating his malevolence. "There's a lot of popular opinions when it comes to this case," he said. "What are yours?"

Joe frowned thoughtfully and shook his head. "I try to pay attention to the facts as much as possible. Though, I can't lie... there's a lot of room for speculation here, and the press is having a field day. A lot of people are bringing up this idea that Dr. Quinzel was brainwashed by the Joker."

"He would have been awarded enough solitary time with her to do it," Jim offered as support for the idea, but the young detective just shook his head again.

"I'm not convinced of that," he said sternly, resting his chin in the crook of his thumb and index finger. "Had she been some other schmoe, _possibly_. I spent some time in the Joker's case file, and he was known for manipulating people with mental diseases... but Dr. Quinzel wasn't just anyone. She was capable, confident, objective... she had the ability to form her own opinions. There's no way that she would just eat anything the Joker had to feed her."

He was observant, Jim would give him that much. He had been having a hard time believing anything else besides brainwashing or manipulation, but he could almost hear Barbara's voice in his head, telling him that he was looking to avoid placing the blame on the girl. How could it be her fault?

"You may be right, but then who's to say-"

"Word on the street is that she's calling herself Harleyquinn." The name stopped Jim dead in his tracks. When he looked up to the young man who sat across from him, he was holding up his hand as if displaying some square, invisible object. "You know, like the harlequin jesters you see on the back of the Joker card?"

"Where on Earth did you hear that?" Jim asked him in a hushed, but almost threatening tone.

"Around," he said abruptly, before he readjusted himself in his chair. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you that working in IA exposes me to some cops who have pretty tight connections to the same circles the Joker finds himself in. I think that's why I might be able to help you."

Jim might have been able to trust him right there, if it hadn't been for that half-smug expression that hadn't changed in several minutes. The way he approached this case almost had the quality of blackmail to it. There was a kind of '_let-me-help-you-or-else'_ tone that lingered here, and he didn't like the idea that this kid thought he was holding the ax.

"Let's be honest here, Commissioner," Callaghan went on. "This isn't exactly the kind of case that presents itself with very many leads. The Joker has been keeping the GCPD guessing since day one, and the only person who seems to be able to keep pace with him is the Batman... and we both know that's not a relationship that the police force is ready to pursue"

Jim had to hold his tongue. So far no one had known about his work with Batman, save for Dr. Arkham and a few nurses at the Asylum, one of which had been killed during the massacre. For now, he had to nod in agreement.

"Let me listen to what people are saying about the Joker. I can get some undercover guys going, and we can see if we can turn up something that will actually provide us with some headway."

Joe's ambition outweighed Jim's own. Although justice might have been concerned, Jim would have liked nothing more than to get Harley in a room and ask her what the hell she was thinking... but he knew that if it ever happened, it was going to be an interrogation room, and there would more than likely be handcuffs involved. But before that, they'd have to do some Serpico-style investigation, and that was where Callaghan's technical team came in.

"Alright... get a team of undercover cops going. _Trustworthy_ undercover cops. I want to see if we can't start digging up some dirt on the Joker and what his operation's like. Once you've got some leads, bring them back to me. Don't get anyone else involved." He just prayed that he was doing the right thing by putting all his eggs in Callaghan's basket.

"You got it!" Joe called out enthusiastically, standing up from his chair. Jim quickly followed suit and walked him over to the door, extending his hand to take Joe's in a firm shake. "Say, Commissioner," he went on, "it's about lunch. Wanna give me some management points over a sandwich? There's a great Cuban deli across the street."

For a moment Jim actually contemplated it – until he looked out into the lobby from his open office door. Just over Joe's shoulder, he saw a woman seated in a chair. She was in her mid-fifties, her wavy dark hair peppered with bits of gray here and there. Although he could still hear Joe talking, the words didn't seem to make any sense as the Commissioner watched her, moisture brimming on the edge of her soft eyes.

"Francine?" he said in a mere whisper, and Joe turned around to regard what he was looking at.

Startled, the woman turned her head sharply in the direction of Jim's voice, and almost seemed relieved to see him. "I called several times, but they wouldn't give me an appointment," she told him, hanging her head as she spoke quietly. "I hope I'm not bothering you... but whenever I call the police they don't believe me."

Jim half-expected to receive a polite parting nod from Detective Callaghan as he walked out the door. Instead, he stood in place beside Jim and looked to him for an introduction. He had to wonder if maybe the kid was a bit socially retarded.

"Uh... Detective Callaghan, this is Francine Quinzel," Commissioner Gordon said, motioning toward the tiny woman who hardly seemed in the mood to be making someone's acquaintance. Nevertheless, she was polite enough to take the young detective's hand in a cold-fish handshake.

She was just as delicate as she'd always been, and Joe's normally firm handshake treated her as gingerly as a piece of crystal. His broad shoulders had dropped upon hearing the name, and he was able to put together the pieces on his own. "You're Dr. Quinzel's mother?"

"Yes, she is," Jim said. "Franny, this is Joe Callaghan. He's going to be one of the lead detectives on your daughter's case."

Francine mouthed the words '_thank you_' to Joe, and the tears in her eyes acted like a repellent to the young man, who gave her a nod and marched toward the exit after telling Jim to give him a call.

Once the door had closed behind Callaghan, Jim turned his attention back to the woman who appeared to be crumbling before him. He reached out to rub her shoulder, an action which recaptured her attention. Once they'd locked eyes again, Jim's most sympathetic glance was there to greet her.

"I've been meaning to get a hold of you..." he whispered to her, directing her toward his office door.

"There wouldn't have been much a point until now, Jim." Francine's thick Queen's accent warbled out of her throat like a bird crying out for rain. "I could hardly get a grip on myself for the week. It would have been pointless to try to talk to me."

"Please tell me someone got ahold of you..." Jim pleaded, though he knew it would have been nearly impossible. Chances were she had woken up in the morning without so much as a phone call.

"I called in... I saw the car chase on the television... I was so confused... I called in, but no one really told me anything." His heart was breaking to see her this way. Even in some of the darkest of times, Francine had never really been the quiet, demure type, but now she seemed subdued... restrained somehow.

"Hold all my calls!" he said to his receptionist, placing a hand on Mrs. Quinzel's back as the two of them stepped into his office. "I promise you, I'm going to make this right...okay?" he asked her, moving to close the door behind him.

"Well, that's kind of why I'm here..." Francine said. "I think there might be a way that I can help _you_."


	44. Chapter 44: Guns

Walking through the mezzanine apartment felt like balancing herself on a shaky catwalk: the place was as unstable as the people who lived inside it. While Harley had to laugh at the simile, it never stopped her from asking, sometimes several times a day, if the place was safe.

The Joker's answer was always the same. _"Probably not, but where else ya gonna go?" _

It was enough to shut her up. The only part of the place that was built on a solid foundation was the bathroom, which had been built into an office at the top of a long flight of stairs from the main floor of the warehouse. It had been used by the administration of a business that had once been there. Harley knew this because, whenever she felt the need for sure footing, she often found herself there. The Joker insisted that she would eventually get used to it, but it had been the better part of a week since she'd been living in his humble abode and she still felt her knees knock whenever she walked across the spans of open floor.

Nevertheless, he appeared confident in the structural integrity of the place. For a man who blew things up for a living, she supposed that she would have to take his word for it.

Most of the awkwardness between them had subsided since their last conversation, and the two had settled into something as close to domestic bliss as they were ever liable to. He would sit on the couch, and she would pick her way through the kitchen, cleaning as she went. He would scoff at politicians, and she would weigh the pros and cons of their campaigns; he would groan about society, and she would explain its necessity. At first she believed that her opinions would start arguments, but the Joker seemed to appreciate the fact that she wasn't one to just smile and nod in agreement with every word he said.

After all, the Joker loved confrontation – why would he be at all interested in someone who moved to avoid it at all costs? Would she go toe-to-toe with him in a dark alley? Hell no...but you bet she'd have an intellectual spar with him any day of the week.

It was a welcome change for her. The last man she spent any significant amount of time with only wanted someone to vent his workplace (and sexual) frustration out on. It hadn't lasted long. It was hard for her to believe that it had been a year and a half since she'd gone on her last date.

The thought must have distracted her, as she stood blankly at the kitchen counter with a damp rag in her hand from where she'd been wiping it down. Staring off into space, she jumped when the Joker had suddenly called out to her.

"Oh ho ho!" he laughed, with a touch of poignancy tucked in to capture her attention. "Must be another slow news day in Gotham. They're still milking this story for everything it's got."

While the big, national news conglomerates had moved on to other headlines, Gotham City News had itself aimed at every single angle of the Joker's great escape, trying to squeeze out as much fear and panic as possible. And the Joker was loving every minute of it. She would sometimes see him grin, even wring his hands like some diabolical supervillain. At times he reminded her of one of the cartoon characters he had constantly skulking across one of his televisions...but it was an image she easily shook from her head.

The Joker turned back to look at her over his shoulder, his enthusiasm turning to sternness when her saw her spaced-out expression. "What are you thinking about?"

Harley just shook her head as she wiped off her damp hands and walked over to the sofa. "Hmm? Nothing, just zoned out for a moment. What are they talking about now?" She collapsed into the seat next to him, causing the floor of the mezzanine to clatter slightly. Harley gazed around for any signs of damage, but the Joker hardly took notice of the shaking.

He gestured to the upper-left screen with the remote, turning the volume up. "Now they're talking about your weapon of choice, and how it is '_the symbol of your criminal mind_'," he said, with a thick layer of sarcasm to hint at his chagrin.

She sighed heavily. "Crackpot psychology. They're getting bored, so they're overanalyzing." She shrugged, then brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. "You might as well be watching Maury."

The Joker hushed her and thumbed the volume even higher, then leaned back to drape his arm along the back of the sofa and around Harley's shoulders. She could tell the interest was feigned.

The man speaking on the television looked like a cross between a lumberjack and Robert De Niro in _The Deer Hunter_, spoke with a Southern accent, and held a framed picture of the gun Harley had used. _"The Magnum that Dr. Quinzel was using... viewers might recognize it as the Dirty Harry gun."_

"_Thaaat's_ right. Like glamorizing it is going to make it sexy or something," Harley groaned, but was shushed yet again as the Joker waved a hand at her.

"_...Basically you're looking at someone who's shooting for the kill. They're looking to make a statement and an impact. It's a very showy gun, but it's also very powerful weapon. It's not really effective if you're looking for a fast-action firearm, since the model that Dr. Quinzel was using was a revolver."_

The newsanchor chimed in enthusiastically, _"That means she'd have to reload after only five shots."_

"_Well, six for this particular model, but yes. Considering thirteen people were shot, she would have had to reload more than twice,"_ the lumberjack finished, smiling at the newsanchor.

The entire display made Harley nauseous. They were so desperately trying to understand her, when in reality she'd only used the gun because it was on hand. It was a simple exercise of Occam's Razor, but no one seemed very excited to just assume the obvious.

The Joker lowered the volume and flipped on the closed captions. "Funny, ain't it?"

She blinked slowly, a crooked half-grin breaking her nonchalant expression. "I'm not laughing..."

"They're killing themselves to try to figure you out, like you're the next big mystery. But they can't understand why you did what you did." Leaning over, he placed the remote back down on the table and stood, the back of his linen shirt wrinkled from all that time pressed against the warm leather of the couch. Harley watched him rise with some confusion, as once he'd planted himself on the couch, he usually didn't move for hours.

He motioned for her to follow, and she stepped after him from the sofa and underneath the stairs to the platform for the floor above. She was curious to what kind of treasures he had stored in such a space, but most of what was stored in the darkened crawlspace looked like junk. While the Joker was able to navigate around with ease, Harley found that following after him too closely would result in one stubbed toe after amother. She was sure the Joker was organized, but only in a way he would ever understand.

Finally, he stopped in front of a large chest. It was tall and made of black metal, and comprised of a set of thin drawers, no more than a few inches high. Harley could faintly see there was a lock at the top of it, and heard the jingling of keys as the Joker reached into the pocket of his trousers.

"I figure by the damage you did at Arkham that you're pretty good with that ol' Magnum of yours?" he asked, motioning toward a flashlight on an adjacent filing cabinet.

Grabbing it, she hit the switch and guided the light to the mess of keys in the Joker's hand as he searched for the right one. "Well, more or less. I practiced some the week before, but all of the people I shot at Arkham couldn't have been more than a few feet away from me. My shoulder was sore the next day. It has a lot of kickback." She furrowed her brows as he finally singled out the correct key, using it to unlock the drawers of the chest. "Why?"

"All this talking about weaponry has brought a very interesting _experiment_ to mind." He opened the fourth drawer.

The chest inside was filled with knives, all fitted securely into foam dye-cut placement. There had to have been fifty in that drawer alone, all lined up next to one another, from the smallest paring knife to a massive Bowie knife.

"I didn't think you were this organized," she quipped softly.

The Joker clucked his tongue at her. "I don't know if you've realized it yet, but I take my job _very _seriously."

He'd have to, with an arsenal like this. Harley had spoken to the Joker on occasion about his infatuation with knives over any other kind of weaponry. His descriptions were often dark, and a little disturbing, but as far as murderers went, that infatuation intrigued her the most.

"You learn a lot about someone when you kill them with a knife," he'd told her, back when he'd been pent up in Arkham. "You get _reeeally_ up close and personal that way. When you think you're gonna die, all the filters come down, and you act as who you truly are."

Harley remembered being entranced by the way the Joker spoke. It was so poignant, and thoughtful, passionate but soft. She'd known immediately that he had been speaking from the heart. To see someone as they really were was such an intimate thing, and the Joker seemed to revel in it.

She never had asked him why he loved those few intimate moments so much. At the time, she'd figured he wouldn't have told her the truth anyway, but now she wasn't so sure.

She was still inspecting the row of knives under the flashlight when the Joker shoved the drawer closed. "I think you'll do better with these," he croaked excitedly, opening another drawer toward the bottom of the chest.

Inside, pressed into the same dye-cut foam, were about five different handguns, all of a different caliber. Harley's eyes danced over them as if she had been a child on Christmas morning. She remembered when she was young, no more than eight or so, having stumbled into her parents' tiny walk-in closet and discovering her father's stash of guns behind her mother's silk dresses. She'd tried to run when they found her there, thinking that her father would be mad. Instead, he'd held each one up for her to see and answered the multitude of questions she'd hurled at him.

They'd always been a point of interest, but Harley had been too chickenshit to actually use one...

Well, until recently.

"Any of these look familiar?" the Joker asked, and she could tell that he was watching her in the darkness.

Harley had to swallow to wet her mouth before she could try talking again. When she did, it was in a hushed tone. "Um...yeah, my father used to have one of those. That, or something very much like it."

As if it had been nothing at all, the Joker snatched the gun she had pointed to from its resting place and held it in the beam of the flashlight to get a better look at it. "Your old man had a thing for Smith & Wesson, huh?" he asked, but Harley didn't answer, because in truth she didn't really know. The large Magnum that her father had given her was the same brand; she knew it only because she'd read the name time and time again from the barrel.

"He's old school. I like that." He smiled and gingerly pressed the gun back into its dye-cut mold. There was a pause between them, and he regarded her with narrow, curious eyes. After that pause, the Joker placed his hands on his thighs, elbows out and slightly hunched over, giving him a bit of a patronizing appearance. "How'd you like to go on a little date? Just me and you."

Harley immediately swung the flashlight to the ground and away from her face, so the Joker wouldn't catch her blushing. "What are you _talking_ about?"

"Tonight, me and you," he said matter-of-factly, locking the chest once he'd slammed the drawer of guns closed. "Wear comfortable clothes."

* * *

Secretly, Harley wished that the Joker hadn't extended the invitation to her so early in the afternoon. It was a struggle to look aloof for so much time. She had absorbed as much time as possible moving through her normal routine: cleaning dishes, scrubbing down the kitchen, organizing the disheveled paper on his drafting table... none of it with the purpose of doing anything besides eating up the hours.

At one point she'd sat with him on the sofa, curled up against the adjacent arm rest, her eyes flashing around the televisions much like his were, but unlike him, she'd found herself incapable of focusing on anything. Frustrated, she'd stood up with a huff, and the Joker had watched her hurry up the stairs with a gaze of bewilderment. She'd thought about sleeping it off, or perhaps having another shower, maybe even picking out her wardrobe for the evening...but as she'd flopped down on the rumpled bed, she could only ask herself one question.

_Why am I looking forward to this? _

The Joker might have had something sinister planned for her. After all, this was some big _experiment_, right? Maybe he would whisk her off into the middle of no where and shoot alternating calibers at her feet until she danced just the way he liked. With Harley's imagination, there was no end to the number of nightmareish outcomes.

She lay there on the bed and lost track of time, coasting between consciousness and unconsciousness as her mind bubbled with thoughts and then desperately tried to clear them. She closed her eyes as light waned over the windows that lined the top of the warehouse, and startled herself when she opened them to see the entire room cast in darkness. Harley had moved onto her side, curled into the fetal position, when his voice suddenly called out to her.

"Hey!" his raspy voice hollered up the stairs.

"Mmf...what?"

"Twenty minutes! Wake up and get your shit together."

Harley smiled, supposing that she had found some way to pass the time. There wasn't much to get together. He'd said to dress comfortably, so she did – a long-sleeve shirt of white cotton and a pair of jeans with a black zip-up jacket to combat Gotham's cool night air. Harley slipped on a pair of faded tan cowboy boots, both with a wide heel. She came down the stairs in rapid succession, the light from the televisions illuminating the dim loft.

She hopped off the last step with a gigantic crash and the sound of scattering metal rang out from under the stairs she had just been standing on. Glancing over the span of his living space and seeing nothing, she called out to him. "Joker?"

A couple seconds later, there was a groan, and the Joker emerged from the shadows with a large army-print duffel flung over his shoulder. She could hear the distinct clattering of metal from within it.

"You alright?" she asked him, a look of confusion on her face.

He didn't answer; he just gave her one of those looks that he often reserved for stupid questions. Adjusting the bag over his shoulder, he walked past her and into the light of the televisions. He'd swapped out his ratty pair of loafers for a sleek looking pair of Dr. Marten's, but was otherwise the same as usual. "C'mon. We leave now and we'll be back before rush hour in the morning."

Harley's brows arched high on her forehead. "Hey, what kind of a date is this? Y'know, my father will be mad if you don't have me home by eleven."

"Somehow I doubt that," he chirped back, making his way toward the elevator on the far side of the room.

She drew a quick breath for a reply, but reconsidered. For some reason or another, the Joker really only found himself funny...or else his dry, obscene sense of humor was lost to her. She caught up and fell into step beside him, looking over the load that he was carrying as he used his free hand to press the command for the freight elevator. "So, where exactly do you plan on taking me?" she asked, having to speak over the whirring gears.

"It's a surprise," he said bluntly, only giving her the briefest of glances before pressing the button for the elevator again.

She found herself more than a little put off by his silence. Normally the trick was getting the Joker to _shut up_. Making him talk was the easy part. But just as manipulation was one of his many gifts, Harley found that she had a penchant for it as well. Still, crossing her arms over her chest and pouting with a huff wasn't so much manipulation as it was passive aggression.

Regardless, he responded to it in very much the same way. The light from the opening elevator doors flooded his face as he gave a very exaggerated eyeroll. "Listen..." he said as the two of them entered the elevator, "you're kind of useless to me as you are now. You got the 'psychotic-killer' part down pat, but _tactically_...? You're a mess."

"I didn't hear you complaining a week ago."

"Shut up," he snapped back. "Were you effective? Sure. Will you continue to be, like this? No. This game takes practice, and overambitious kids like you make quick work of getting themselves killed." Motioning her to close the elevator's grate, he fingered the button for the bottom floor. "Normally I wouldn't care."

That last sentence caught her off guard. She managed to pull the grate closed just as the elevator began to move toward the ground level. Shooting him a surprised glance, it wasn't long before her face softened into a touched look – with an admitted touch of snark. Standing up to her full height and staring flatly to the doors before her, she couldn't help but crack a smirk. "Is there something to suggest that you do?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself," he quipped back quietly, shifting the duffel over his shoulder once more as the elevator landed with a gentle thud. "You have potential...but this isn't exactly a desk job, and it's not something you can survive on brains alone." He stepped out onto the warehouse floor as soon as Harley had lifted the grate. He moved ahead of her, striding through a wide partition between skids of stacked supplies. "Do I really look like the kind of guy who's going to save your ass every time you find yourself in trouble?"

He had a point there...

Beyond Harleyquinn's explosive debut at Arkham Asylum, Harley herself had no experience with managing an assault on the city on par with the Joker's usual hijinks. He'd realized long ago that doing the kinds of things he wanted to do was going to take some effort... more than just one man was capable of. The trick was trying to find capable but disposable men who would be able to accomplish their tasks, but for the most part wouldn't be missed. The Joker had a few dedicated men, from what she had seen so far, but no one had worked this closely and this exclusively with him. At least... that was the impression he was giving her.

At last the two of them came to a large sports utility vehicle, parked between two skids at the north wall of the warehouse. The Joker removed the keys from his pocket and unlocked the car. Heaving the duffel off his shoulder, he used one hand to open the truck, tossing the bag inside.

Harley's demeanor had softened significantly since the time the verbal spat in the elevator. "So, I'd be correct in assuming that there's a whole bunch of guns in that bag?"

"Yeah, you would," he said quietly. Reaching up over his head, he pulled down the trunk door, closing it firmly and leaning smugly against the back window.

"This is your idea of a date?" Harley asked, a whisper of a smile spreading across a set of prime pink lips. "You want me to learn how to defend myself? You're going to teach me how to shoot a gun?"

There was a part of Harley that loved making him shift uncomfortably with the idea of his accidental, completely nondeliberate sweetness – but whenever she asked a question like this, the Joker had a way of moving two large emotional steps backward. Just when she had uncovered some kind of hidden truth, he made damn sure to say something so prickly that there would be no way to determine how soft an underbelly he was harboring for her.

"I'm just taking out insurance on my investment," he said, motioning her to the passenger door without looking at her. "Otherwise I'll be more than happy to use you as a human shield the next time we get caught in the cross fire, hmm?"

Harley sighed and rolled her eyes. The two of them quickly turned their backs to one another, both sliding into their respective seat, their doors slamming shut in unison. An impenetrable silence settled in between them. Beyond just being the Joker, he was a _man_ on top of it all, and so as much as it pained her to admit it, Harley knew the frustration she was feeling wasn't shared.

But... she could sure as hell communicate it.

When he reached toward the glovebox, she made a big show to move her knees out of the way, turning to glare out the passenger side window of the car. She couldn't see him, but there was a sense of vindication that came over her when he let out an exasperated sigh.

Harley's frustration waned as the engine started and the two of them took off in complete silence, save for the gentle humming sound of the engine. Outside, businesses in Gotham City tore themselves down for the day. Her eyes flashed around the window, looking between the neon lights and people walking down the street - drinking coffee, holding onto paper clothing bags with twine handles, talking, laughing, carrying on...

There was a moment where Harley's mind flashed back to times like that – when she had the ability to do anything in the world, and still she questioned her freedom.

"Did you every have a life before this one?" she asked, her eyes glittering with the lights from outside, streaking past them as the Joker drove through another intersection.

He appeared a little caught off guard by the break in their silence. Eyes wide and one hand on the wheel, he shot her a quick gaze before looking back at the road. "Oh... you're talking to me now?" he asked. When she didn't reply, he shrugged. "I don't know what you mean."

With a sigh, Harley's eyes moved to the street again. She pressed her fingertip into the glass, pointing to a man in a three-piece suit as he checked his watch and tried to hail a cab. Harley watched him as they drove past, and the world appeared to move in slow motion as they did. He was young, looked barely a day over thirty, was handsome, well-dressed.

The Joker was scoffing before he was even out of sight in the rear view mirror. "Have I ever been a square? No."

Deflection: the Joker's middle name. "You know that's not what I mean..." Pressing her fingertips to her forehead, she gestured outside into the city night once again as he turned a corner onto a larger road. "You know... like, have you ever had the freedom to walk down the street in broad daylight?"

"Well, that depends on the street," he said at first, but when he turned to see the growing frustration returning to her face, he must have figured that he should give her something with a little more meat to chew on. "Y'know, I can hide in plain sight better then you think."

"I doubt it... not now anyway. You have a very _distinct_ look. You couldn't take two steps down the street without someone recognizing you." It was surprising to think that the Joker looked just as dark and surreal with the makeup as he did without it. Maybe it was her familiarity with him that caused her to believe that... Harley had seen him without the makeup far more often than she'd seen him with it. Even now, as he sat in the driver's seat, there wasn't anything diabolical about him, but there was still a darkness in his face that couldn't be missed. Even if you didn't recognize him immediately, you still wouldn't want to run into him in a dark alley.

There came a large huff from the driver's seat, and Harley turned to see a large, malformed pout spread across the Joker's mouth. "You callin' me ugly?"

She went back to looking out the passenger side window, although she couldn't help but steal a couple glances at him with a withheld grin. "I don't think you're ugly..."

There was a satisfied, maybe even smug grunt that came from the back of his throat, but before he could begin gloating, Harley pressed him again. "You didn't answer my question. You _never_ answer my questions."

"What, was I ever normal?" he asked suddenly, in a tone that might have taken her head off had she not cringed against the passenger door. "No. Never."

The finite quality of the answer made Harley turn to look out the window once again. "Oh..." she muttered quietly, watching people walk by on this new sparsely populated street.

"Y'know..." he started, turning to look between the road and Harley, alternating every few seconds between the two. "If you want, I can just pull over and you can skip right back into that cookie cutter life you miss so much."

Harley wondered for a moment if maybe he dreaded the very idea he was proposing, so with a faint smile, she tried to put him at ease. "I'm not about to give up on this just because you're being difficult... you're always difficult. Besides, I don't know if you've noticed, but I can't just skip back into that life even if I wanted to...which I _don't, _by the way."

Another silence passed between them as the Joker turned the car onto the highway that led west and out of the city. "All I'm saying is that you call this making an investment...well, great. I hope you realize that I made a big investment in you, too."

Harley leaned over her armrest with her arms crossed over her chest. Her life might have been cookie cutter, but she left it...and it had been one hell of a trip down the rabbit hole, that was for sure.

The Joker took a deep breath, checked his blind spot, and changed lanes, accelerating delicately once he reached the fastlane. "But..." he started and looked over to her, a bit of a smile on his face, "you _do_ miss it, right?"

She smiled and shook her head, watching the city bleed away as they passed over the Gotham River. "The only thing I miss..." She took a deep breath, and looked up at the stars through the sunroof. "I would give _anything_ for a good cup of coffee."

* * *

One would think that driving into the night would seem like the perfect opportunity for conversation – but not for this pair. Other than the occasional bout of casual observation or complaint about something on the radio, the two remained quiet, once again listening to the sound of the engine whirring faintly under the hood.

The pessimistic corner of Harley's brain wondered what corner of nameless forest he was bringing her out to, and what he would do with her once they got there. One would think, again, that only the truly courageous would willingly get into a car with a documented criminal lunatic, with a bag full of powerful guns, an hour away from any kind of civilization. Around them were thousands of acres rife with trees and shrubs, the perfect place to hide a body. Harley didn't consider herself courageous... or any other noble quality, for that matter. But other than sheer paranoia, Harley had no reason to distrust the Joker. If he'd wanted to, he could have killed her at the warehouse, dumped her body in the river, and saved himself an hour's drive into the middle of nowhere.

He was nothing if not economical. If he planned on investing so much of his time into this, it would have to be for something more important than killing her.

"Do you know anything about this area?" he asked, so suddenly that Harley nearly jumped out of her skin. He was reclining casually in the driver's seat, his right hand perched atop the steering wheel.

Once she had managed to work past the surprise and absorb the question, she shook her head. "Uh... no. To be completely honest, I haven't left Gotham City in nearly a decade."

That made his gaze dart over to her is disdain. "Seriously? Even I've been out of Gotham in the last ten years."

"Yeah well... who asked you?" she asked with a huff, which must have been the right thing the say because it caused an amused smile to streak quickly across his face like lightning.

"About thirty years ago," he began, "Gotham was changing. In big ways. The Wayne family was providing cheap public transportation that was stretching to every corner of the city, so people from each area could work in the city's financial core."

Though the topic was interesting, the point that appealed to Harley was that he seemed to have an education in local history. "Yeah, the monorail system."

"Exactly! Anyway..." he went on, "because the city was experiencing such an amazing amount of growth, the city planners knew that it would only be a matter of time before the urban sprawl would overtake the island, and a series of suburban towns would have to spring up on the other wise of the river." The way he spoke so matter-of-factly made Harley want to smile and suggest to him that maybe he should have made a career as a lecturer. There was no doubt the guy was affluent enough in several topics to be able to do the job.

But before Harley could squeeze a word in edgewise he was off again. "So, Gotham's city planners got ambitious, and bought the plots of land west of the city from farmers and the like. They proposed that they would build these excellent suburban communities inside commuting distance from the city, but that they'd be affordable to people who, say... couldn't exactly buy property in the Palisades."

"Okay, so Gotham wanted to provide middle-class income housing to get people out of the downtown core. They were being smart."

"No!" The Joker lifted his index finger. "Rule number one of any kind of real estate is that you _never_ purchase property without assessing the need."

"That's rich, coming from someone who lives in a stolen warehouse. When was the last time _you_ purchased real estate?" she asked him, her mind working to pick up the little personal breadcrumbs he'd left behind in that sentence.

"Never. But what has Gotham done in the last ten years? It consumed the island, so what did it do?"

Harley had to smile; she had never really considered it until he asked the question. "It couldn't build out, so it built up."

"Ninety percent of that island is covered in skyscrapers, because builders realized people didn't _want_ to live outside the city. Why would they, when Gotham City is where all the action is?" he asked, a small chuckle vibrating at the back of his throat. "And by action, I mean crime and murder and rape and all that good stuff."

Harley kept her opinions to herself on that one. She'd lived in Gotham her entire life and had never really had a problem with the city's crime... until now.

"So..." she said, trying to nudge him into finishing his point.

"_So_, the thing with these wannabe suburbs was that they never really got off the ground. No one wanted to live in them, so the land pretty much went to shit. Most of the farmers who sold the land decided not to move back. A lot of these budding towns had set up police stations, fire halls, a few libraries...but none of it really went to use." Turning the signal on, the Joker calmly edged the SVU into the right lane. Harley saw the exit for '105 - Asheville' about a half a mile ahead.

"And this is important to you because...?"

"Because... all these places are pretty much abandoned now, except for a few farms who sell organic produce in the city. Asheville is the furthest _supposed _suburb away from Gotham, and has an abandoned police station..." Finally taking the exit, the Joker moved into the left turning lane. "Complete with a firing range."

"You told me all that just to say that you were taking me to an abandoned firing range?" She was surprised that the Joker would ever feel the need to be so allegorical, when usually he was a man of few words.

He looked at her briefly before his eyes returned to the darkness of the road in front of them. "It was gettin' kind of stale in here. Sue me..."

Within a few minutes, the car had pulled up to an old building that was little more than a big concrete block in the middle of a cowfield. It had a few windows in the front, along with a small awning over the door, but besides that was rather featureless. Harley unbuckled her seatbelt, expecting the Joker to throw the car into park once they had pulled in front of the building. Instead, he drove around the length of the police station, parking around the back.

"I thought you said this was a ghost town?" Harley asked.

Turning the key in the ignition, he narrowed his eyes and gestured to her with a forceful hand, speaking in that quietly commanding tone. "Whenever you can, be invisible," he said. "People are always more afraid of the things they can't see."

She smiled devilishly as he slid out of the car, quickly following suit.

Toward the back of the vehicle, she watched as the Joker opened the trunk door, throwing the duffel of guns over his shoulder. He pulled up the edges of the rug inside the truck, exposing the spare tire well under the floor of the trunk. Instead of a spare tire, though, there was a number of different tools and weapons, including a large lock cutter which the Joker brought to rest on his shoulder. "Mind getting the door?" he asked her, and of course Harley obliged – though she had to hop slightly to reach the door to pull it down.

"So how did you find this place?" she asked as the two of them walked to a small utility panel at the back of the building.

He shrugged. "I know a thing or two about the area. When I was first starting out, I needed a place to practice with different guns. I figured there'd be a place out here that I could use."

Though her mind was desperately trying to piece together a younger, inexperienced version of the Joker, the fact that he _did_ know so much about the area was what struck her most. Her eyebrows furrowed in curiosity, "Yeah, how do you know so much about this place?"

"Dunno...just do. Here, hold this," he said in a dead monotone, before tossing Harley the duffel from off his shoulder. The weight was immense. There had to have been about fifty pounds in the bag, enough weight to knock the wind out of her for a moment as she struggled to control the bag.

While she righted herself, the Joker positioned the lock cutters on an old lock around an electrical panel. "All civil buildings have electricity routed directly into them without charge since, well... it doesn't make sense to charge _yourself_ for electricity."

"Uh huh..." Harley groaned as she managed the weight of the guns.

The loud snapping of the metal lock recaptured her attention. The Joker yanked off the lock and threw open the panel door, starting to flip the switches inside. "They never really cut off power to these places, just in case they need them for one reason or another. They just turn off the switches. Hopefully that did the trick." He looked at the windowless back of the building and up toward the roof. It wasn't more than a few seconds before he threw a judgmental glance at Harley as she struggled with the bag. "I thought you could lift your own weight. You having trouble with fifty pounds?" he asked, relieving her of the bag with a laugh.

Harley took a deep breath in relief once he'd taken it away. "Yeah, I can support my own weight for a few seconds on a balance beam, but not when I'm having it _hurled at me_ like a sack of potatoes. Shouldn't come as much of a surprise that you're stronger than me," she said, taking a few seconds to settle down as she dusted off her arms.

He must have taken Harley's observation as a compliment, because when she looked back up at him, there was a smugness in his face that wasn't usually there. "C'mon... it's almost midnight," he said, nudging her shoulder as he walked past.

The two made their way around the building to the front door, at which point the Joker placed the duffel on the ground and rifled through his pants pocket for something. Harley watched in amazement as he pulled out both a torsion wrench and a lockpick to skillfully unlock the front door.

"Okay, Mr. Criminal Mastermind! You know how to pick locks too?" she asked in disbelief.

Grinning, the Joker waved a hand to quiet her down. "How do you think I got into your apartment?" he asked, a rusty, grating _click_ echoing from the door before it slowly creaked open.

"Ah yes, the good ol' days! Back when you thought I was attractive," Harley huffed acrimoniously.

She stepped past the Joker and into the musty, pitch black police station. From where he'd been kneeling in front of the lock, he stood to his feet, lifting the bag from the cement floor. As soon as he stepped inside, he reached for the switch panel to the right of the door, lifting one of the switches to test the lighting. To his chagrin, nothing turned on.

Grunting his frustration, the Joker called out to her before she moved any farther. "Watch out, nothing's coming on. Might start a fire if we're not careful."

"Well, that's all right. You're a bit of a pyro, aren't you? Besides, this is a concrete block in a cow pasture, ten miles away from anything. If the place goes up in smoke, nothing will end up being destroyed," she told him, though he couldn't see much of her anymore. "Anyway, all the lights in here look like they're incandescent. They burn out quickly, and if this place hasn't really been used in years, chances are the filament has oxidized."

After a few seconds she reemerged from the darkness and motioned him to follow her, a coy smile on her face. "You're not the only one who knows stuff, y'know..." she teased with a wink. Motioning toward the back of the large concrete building, she tried to offer him a bit of hope. "Let's try a little further back. Who knows, might get lucky."

Harley could hear the clattering of the guns as he lifted them over his shoulder. She moved cautiously toward the back of the station. Harley allowed her eyes enough time to adjust to the sheer darkness of the room, her hands wrapping around a door frame as they entered the back room. Once she had taken a few blind steps inside, she could hear the Joker's footsteps shuffle up behind her. "Close your eyes." he said to her, in a calm voice – something she didn't hear very often.

Curiosity made her want to ask why, tempted with what the answer would possibly be. On the other hand, her inner teenage girl cooed and giggled over what it could mean...while her pessimist mind told her that he didn't want her to see the final blow coming.

She closed her eyes.

There was an audible click, and the light of the room burned red through her eyelids.

Slowly, she opened her eyes, which fluttered wildly as her pupils rapidly contracted. "It's easier that way," he remarked. "If you close your eyes when the lights come on, it doesn't hurt as much. Bright lights always give me a headache."

"I'll keep that in mind," she told him nonchalantly, but he turned to give her a skeptical glance.

"What are you talkin' about? You already knew that," he told her as he placed the duffel bag down on a rickety table at the back of the concrete room. "When you gave me your sunglasses that day on the roof a few months back?"

Harley had almost forgotten about that. It seemed strange that he would remember something like that so inescapably, seeing as he would usually shy away from bouts of nostalgia. Smiling to herself, she looked around the room, which was unlike any place she'd ever been before. It was a large room, about a hundred feet wide, and from the door they had just entered to the very back of the building there were stalls facing the adjacent wall. Save for the back wall where the two of them were standing, the other three walls appeared to be coated in a protective material. It was matte, and looked to be soft to the touch.

A loud _thud_ came from behind her. Spinning to see what had caused it, Harley watched as one by one the Joker pulled a gun from the duffel, placing it on the table after a quick once-over. Unzipping a large pocket on the end of the bag, he pulled out several boxes of ammunition, and set them on the table beside their corresponding gun.

"Why so many?" she asked, moving to stand beside him. There weren't any more than half a dozen bullets, but unless the Joker planned on turning her into his own neo-urban version of Rambo, there was really no need for this much artillery.

"See this?" he asked, picking up a rather impressive handgun. "This is my favorite gun."

Most of the gun was a matte black, but the slide on top was silvery white, gleaming in the fluorescent lights that lined the ceiling above their heads. Beside it was what Harley recognized as a clip, but it was larger than any she'd ever seen before, much longer than the handle of the gun. Quickly, almost too quickly for her eyes to register, he took the clip off the table, and slid it into the gun. Once it secured itself with a firm _click_, he pulled the slide back to chamber a round.

"Wha... what it is?" Harley stammered. She hadn't thought she'd ever find a gun more intimidating than the one her father had given her. Or maybe it wasn't the gun so much as the one who was holding it.

"This..." he said, looking the weapon up and down for a moment before he reached out to hand it to her, "is a Glock 17, converted to full-automatic, which means that..."

"...it fires continuously. I've watched enough Fox News to know what that means," she said, and tried not to be surprised by the weight of the weapon when he all but dropped it in her hand.

He must have picked up on it, since he let out an amused grunt. "It's heavy because it's got an extended magazine. A regular clip holds thirteen rounds, which wouldn't fire for more than a couple seconds if you could convert it to automatic. This clip hold thirty-three, which will usually fire for about seven seconds if you just hold down the trigger."

"This is the one you use all the time?" she asked, looking over to where he stood a few steps away, watching her as she handled the gun.

"No.. and that's why I brought more that just a couple." He was quiet for a few seconds, then motioned for her to hand back the gun. "It's easy enough for me to tell what kind of gun you're going to be comfortable firing. We both know you can handle a Magnum, but you can probably be more effective with something a little lighter. Say... something that's not going to dislocate your shoulder?"

Harley had to chuckle at that as she placed the gun back in it outstretched hand. "Yeah, you're right."

"But this isn't about always being comfortable," he shot back as soon as she had finished her sentence. "Sometimes you need to be able to work with what's available. You'll have your old standbys... and they should express your style and your efficiency. But they can't be _all_ you're good with, or one day you'll find yourself up Shit Creek."

Harley's eyes shot back to the table. "But some of these guns are huge... and if you're looking for a gun that isn't going to take my arms off at the shoulders, I'm pretty sure the sawed-off shotgun isn't going to do the trick."

"Didn't say you had to be an _expert_. I said you needed you need to be able to work with what's available. I'm running a relatively small operation here," he said, spreading his arms into an unceremonious shrug. "We have to come to terms with the fact that we're not going to have the kind of resources that everyone else has."

"So why doesn't everyone just bring their own piece to the party?" Harley asked, watching the Joker pick up a smaller gun from the table.

"Because you can't trust anyone these days." His tone was distant as he stared down the barrel of the gun before removing the clip to load it. "I like things done a certain way...you want to carry your father's revolver on you for back up, go ahead. But there's no way in hell I'm going to wait for you to reload every six shots when I've got thirty-three. You invite people to bring what they got, and you get some _reeeeal_ relics in the bunch." With a chuckle, he pulled back the slide on the nine-millimeter handgun, the telltale _click_ of a round sliding into the chamber. "Besides... what does this look like, _'The Turbulent Thirties'_? You see me wearing a fedora and a pinstripe suit? Semiautomatic is really the way to go. This is the future! Live in the _now. _Hell, even then they had Tommy guns," he said, waving the gun flamboyantly.

Harley didn't give that a response beyond raised eyebrows and a curious glance. The Joker took ahold of her wrist and pressed the handle of the gun into her palm. "Here... shoot the damn thing."

"At what, exactly?" she asked, looking over the gun he had just given her. It was nowhere near as heavy as his favorite gun, and didn't resemble her father's gun at all. It wasn't heavy, and was completely black save for a bit of gray mesh checkering on the handle.

The Joker filpped a switch in the stall right next to him, and a few banks of armored fluorescent lights hummed to life overhead. On the inside panel, the Joker hit another switch. When nothing happened, he gave a frustrated growl and pounded the panel firmly with the side of his fist. Then there was a whirring sound, and the chain that hung above the stall began to grind furiously. A few seconds later, the chain came to an abrupt stop as the Joker beamed triumphantly.

"What are you doing?" Harley asked skeptically, as he turned to root around through the duffel once more. He removed a rolled-up pad of paper, smoothing it out against his chest.

"You ever watch like... _Beverly Hills Cop_ or _Lethal Weapon_, or movies like that?" he asked her, glancing up to her before flattening the paper on the table and tearing off the first page. It had the dark outline of a man on it, with white target rings placed in the center of his head and torso.

"Mmm...no, actually. I never really watched a lot of movies growing up," she told him, a little embarrassed.

He only scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Right, I forgot, you were out being the little overachiever." Shaking his head, he did his best to iron out the sheet with his hands. "Me, I loved _Lethal Weapon_. We should watch that," he said casually, stepping back over to the stall.

"We...?" she whispered, and felt the embarrassment from her previous comment bloom into something a little more obvious.

Thankfully, he didn't seem to notice. "_This_..." he said in a patronizing tone, "is a target, and it..." He paused and clipped the target paper onto a clip connected to the chain. "...goes right _here_. Now, with any luck, it should just zoom over to the other side of the room." Pounding the panel in front of them again, the paper took off, swirling like a superhero's cape as it sped to the wall all the way across the room.

Turning back to her with raised brows, the Joker pointed down the length of the range. "Now that's about a hundred feet away. If you can get anywhere close to the target, I'll be impressed."

"And if I don't?" Harley asked, looking up from the gun in her hands.

He squinted, and took a step closer to her before leaning over slightly to look her straight in the eye. It was intimidating enough to bring Harley to press her back against the wall of the small compartment they stood in. "Well, then..." he started in a whisper, "I won't be impressed."

And just when Harley thought he would back up to scrutinize her from a distance, there was a short silence that proved to be the most awkward Harley had spent so far with the Joker. She could smell him from this close - leather and bitter-almond... the smell of cyanide. Never blinking as her eyes jumped across his face in an attempt to read him, the Joker finally moved away.

Harley watched him carefully as he took a few steps away to lean against the adjacent side of the stall, then turned to inspect the target that was an intimidating distance away. The length of the range seemed to stretch out and tilt like a scene from a Hitchcock film. She held up the gun, but the sound of the magazine clattering inside the gun gave away her nervousness.

"Stop..." he called out very flatly, and somehow, Harley was relieved. "First of all... when your target is that far away, you have to use the sight." The Joker pointed to the nose of the gun, where there was a little notch in the metal to assist in aiming. "Secondly, you're too choked up on the handle." He reached out to take her wrist again, although far more delicately than he had before, moving her grip a little further down the length of the handle. "When you pull the trigger, the slide is going to come back, and if your hand is up to high..." here the Joker pointed to the webbing in between his thumb and forefinger. "You get what is affectionately referred to as _slide bite_."

Harley sucked air through her teeth as he described the injury, but he waved it off. "You'll be fine... just keep your hands further down on the grip and try it again."

Now this was foreign to her. Just seconds ago he was intimidating her, and now he was guiding her almost lovingly through the process. He took a couple steps back again and motioned her to try it again.

Turning back toward the length of the range, Harley found the spinning and stretching his intimidation had caused had disappeared. Calmly, she brought the gun up to eye level, steadied herself for the kickback, and squeezed the trigger.

There was a very loud _pop_ that radiated through the room, so loud that Harley closed her eyes once she heard it. Upon opening her eyes a second later, she could see the target flutter on the other side of the room, though it was unclear exactly where she had hit it. Once the dust had settled, and the reality of the action struck her, Harley felt a kind of electricity surge up her arms from the palms of her hands. Staring at the fun for a few seconds, she turned back to the Joker with a surreal gaze.

He only gestured back to the target, a smug, knowing grin plastered across his jagged mouth. "Well, unload the clip and then we'll see how good you really are."

"With pleasure..." she croaked back to him in this husky, gritty tone that even she had a hard time recognizing. Bringing the gun back to eye level, she stared determinedly down the barrel, and squeezed the trigger again, and again, and _again_. By the end she was firing with such rapid succession that she pulled the trigger twice even when it just clicked empty.

"Hmmmm..." The Joker hummed in curiosity as he calmly stepped beside her, hitting the switch to return the paper target to the stall. Harley was scared as it swirled back toward them, hoping that at least one of the shots would be considered satisfactory. By the third or fourth shot, she wasn't even focusing on the target anymore, just the way the gun felt as it pulsed in her hand with every pull of the trigger. It felt very much what she assumed a still-beating heart would feel like, if one were able to hold such a thing.

As the target came to a sudden halt before them, Harley shook herself out of her stupor and watched as he pulled it down off the clip. "You know, I remember when you said that your daddy killed a couple cops. Had someone look up the article for me...the reporters said that he shot one between the eyes and the other square in the chest from nearly sixty-five feet," he recalled, holding the target out at arm's-length, eyes dancing over it. "He must have been a modern-day Daniel Boone to pull off that kind of sharpshooting with a Magnum revolver." There was an air of mystery in his voice when he spoke. "You're not perfect, but you're not bad."

He extended the target out for her to see. All of the bullet holes, save for one, came into contact with the man painted onto the target, and several of them appeared to pierce the chest, neck and head. "At least six of those shots are fatal."

As her eyes combed the target, Harley didn't quite know what to say. All she could say for sure was that every time the gunshots rang out, it felt like an alarm clock going off in her head, waking her up from a long, restless sleep.

"Alright!" the Joker called out triumphantly. "What do ya say we try something a little... bigger?"

* * *

The sound of a shotgun round entering the chamber is unlike any other sound in the world. It's two distinct clicks, in rapid succession. If you've heard that sound before and were unlucky enough to not be holding the gun, it is a sound you will never forget. For Harley, the feeling she received every time she cocked the shotgun was akin to breaking through the water after holding your breath for far too long. The moment that shell clicked into place, she was happy to be alive... and certainly nothing thus far had pushed her closer to pure euphoria more than pulling that trigger.

And then...

_KA-BOOM! _

And the two of them exploded into a fit of laughter.

The last three hours of her life had gone from a serious lecture on firearms to the two of them screwing around with different guns. She'd never heard the Joker laugh so loud as when she jostled around from the recoil of a fully-automatic assault rifle earlier in the evening.

"Okay... maybe not that one," he laughed as Harley rubbed her shoulder.

Even though the shotgun offered just as much (if not more) kickback than the rifle, she didn't have to end up holding on for dear life as the shells rattled out of the chamber. The rifle was nice and clean when you fired it, a loud bang and a rainfall of shrapnel. Harley loved it.

She pleaded with the Joker to give her just a couple more rounds as the two played tug of war with the empty sawed-off shotgun, but ultimately he snatched it away from her. "You're such a kid sometimes, you know that?" he asked.

It must have been what Harley needed to hear, since she took a deep breath, diagnosing herself with a fit of mania. She was usually never like that. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her hands were antsy, trigger-happy even...

She could only remember feeling like this once before.

Exhaling deliberately, Harley withdrew another breath as the episode subsided. It felt very much like a dream. Once she recognized it, she was able to wake up from it. She knelt down to collect some of the spent shell casings from the floor.

"Don't bother..." he told her, motioning for her to stand up. "It's not like they're going to trace the guns back to anyone. Not like you and I are strangers to them, either."

That was certainly true, though maybe covering her tracks was something that ran through her veins. "What time is it anyway?" she asked, shoving the empty shells she picked up into her jacket pocket.

"About four o'clock... by the time we get back into the city, it'll be five, and by the time we get back to the warehouse rush hour should be starting." His tone was so casual that she had a hard time deciphering what kind of mood he was in. Once he'd repacked the duffel, he turned to look back at her again, motioning back the way they'd come. "Ya ready?" he asked, already walking before Harley had the chance to respond.

It was something of a relief to Harley when she heard the crickets chirping outside. The winter had felt so long. It was hard to believe that just a month ago, she'd been in court, testifying on behalf of the Joker. If she ever ended up there again, no doubt she'd be fighting the prosecution for the second time in her life. But now... in the midst of her life of war, everything was so peaceful. Living for the moment must have been the goal of every criminal's life... and standing here in the darkness with the crickets chirping, a crystal-clear night sky hanging over their heads, it was easy to get caught in the moment.

"Can I ask you a question?" Harley asked, listening to the sounds of their shoes trudging through the dewy grass as they walked back toward the car.

Though she couldn't quite make out his expression, she saw him shrug, responding in that gruff tone she'd come to expect. "You just did..."

"You know what I mean! C'mon... I have anything to ask you," she exclaimed, trying her best not to sound too whiny. Not that he ever had the patience for her attitude, but tonight was most certainly not the night for that, particularly not after he'd spent the last six hours trying to teach her something she could have learned the hard way.

Sighing heavily, he looked around the area, a bit of gravel crunching under their feet as they made their way across the makeshift parking lot where they had left the truck. "Yeah, fine...but try not to get too mushy on me, would you? Crickets... stars..." he said with disgust, pointing to the sky. "I know what effect these things can have on a woman's _sensibilities_."

That choice comment made Harley quirk a very inquisitive brow. "Oh, ya do?" she asked, a paper-thin smirk weaving over her lips.

With his back turned to her as he opened the trunk, he grunted displeasure and tossed the duffel in. Whipping around, flailing his arms about comically, he seemed to be a little caught off guard by Harley's little provocation. "Just shut up and ask the question already!" he commanded, but his frustration could do little to wipe the grin off her face.

"You seem to enjoy using guns...so why did you use knives to actually kill people?" she asked him, nonchalantly.

Closing the trunk, he turned and leaned against it, absorbing the question. "I thought I'd already told you why," he said, his eyes locked on her as she jingled the discarded shotgun shells in her pocket.

Harley twisted her mouth, clearly remembering the last time the Joker had told her about his penchant for an edged weapon. It required close proximity, and thus you understood and saw more of your victim...but that wasn't really the part that struck Harley's curiosity. "Yeah, you did..."

"So...?"

"So, you can get just as up close and personal to your victims by holding a gun to their head... they'd beg for their lives in just the same way. Death is death... it doesn't matter what instrument you use to carry it out," she said.

But the Joker's smug expression made it clear that he obviously didn't feel the same way. Silently, he turned and opened the trunk once more, unzipping the duffel. Harley felt a pang of regret, a moment where she wanted to just shrug it off and tell him to forget it, but before she had the chance he'd turned around with the first handgun he'd offered her.

He pointed it at her. "There... how's that?" he asked. "How do you feel?"

Harley didn't say anything, but took a couple calm steps backward, her eyes paying very close attention to the gun. "See? You're not really saying much of anything, are you?" Just as slowly as she moved, the Joker followed after her, his leather boots crunching on the gravel. "So, with a gun... it could all be over in an instant. I could shoot you in the head... or square in the chest, and _boom_, you're done."

Her mind raced... was he trying to prove a point – intimidate her into understanding? Perhaps he thought the question out of line and was trying to scare some respect into her? The last thought made her cringe...did he mean to kill her now in the darkness of the countryside? Seemed a little too romantic for the Joker's tastes.

As she continued to walk backwards, she felt the soft grass under her soles once again, and took a deep gasp of air when she felt her back press up against the cold wall of the concrete building. The Joker came to a stop no more than a few feet in front of her, the gun still pointed at her chest. "You see... I _could_ shoot you from here, and easily do enough damage to put you out of your misery in just a few seconds...but you never would've said a word to me." Carefully taking another couple steps, he stood directly in front of her, his left hand holding the gun and his right blocking her escape.

They locked eyes as Harley felt the pressure of the barrel against her breastbone. They stood like that for a few seconds, his black eyes hovering over hers, and while his couldn't have been more excited, hers were flat as they turned to glance down at the gun again.

"The gun is the centerpiece here. It steels the attention..." The Joker lowered it slowly, turning the safety on and pointing the barrel into his pants pocket. "But this..." he started in a shrill tone, the sound on his switchblade's spring action widening her eyes. But before she could actually turn to glance down at it, the Joker's free hand had caught her by the neck. "This really provokes a _response_."

His strong grip held her against the wall, and Harley watched in terror as he brought the knife up, holding the pointed tip of the blade a mere inch away from her left eye. "See, people aren't so much afraid of death as they are of _pain_," he told her in that threatening sickly sweet tone, which made him appear all the more terrifying. The sight caused her to squirm, bringing her hands up to wrap around his wrist, but her just shushed her. "Now... I could pop out that pretty, bright blue eye of yours... but you and I both know it wouldn't kill you. It wouldn't kill you if I sliced your face... split open your side, or cut off your ear." he purred, his eyes narrowing, but never breaking away from hers.

Harley had had enough. His scare tactics to answer a simple question had gone too far. "Joker, enough..." she croaked, but as she moved to step away from the wall his grip on her throat tightened and he pressed his body up against hers to hold her in place.

"Ah... you see, revolt. That's a rare emotion. In the fight-or-flight theory, I find most to be of the flight persuasion... but not you, huh? _Never_ you..." He grinned over her as she struggled to capture a breath. "And up this close, I can see everything... the way your eyes are swimming with fear, the way your lips flush cherry red, with blood and adrenaline..." Here he trailed off and his eyes began to scour her face, picking out the little details he had seen in so many faces before hers... but no, this was different.

Time slowed down, and she closed her eyes. Regardless of what was unfolding behind the building here, the crickets still chirped in the long grass, and a heavy breeze rustled the forest of trees not far away along the border of the cow pasture. The cold steel from the butt of the gun the Joker had just threatened her with pressed up against the slightly exposed skin of her stomach. Concentrating on all these tiny details slowed her pounding heart, and alleviated a great deal of the fear. When her eyes next opened, there was still a racing heartbeat, but it didn't belong to her. Limply, she released her grip from around his wrist, her arms falling by her sides.

His voice was almost a hushed tone when he continued, but his sentences were short and to the point, taking deep deliberate breaths in between them. "You don't need to say a word... I see everything I need to see. I know everything I need to know. That's the most satisfying part of the whole thing... this moment, right here."

What the Joker had in intimidation, Harley more than made up for in speed and delivery. Taking hold of the gun's handle, she quickly used her thumb to flip the safety, and once again the two found themselves in this all too familiar position. He stood, pressed against her, the blade of his knife pressed flat against her cheek, and she, eyes burning, held the barrel of a gun against his temple.

His grip loosened on her throat just enough to allow her to speak, a small smirk on his face. "It's never _quite_ been that visceral... but you get the gist," he croaked, moving to pull away from her, allowing his arms to drop to the side.

"You already know all this about me..." she said breathlessly, rubbing her neck to stimulate the blood flow. "You know almost _everything_ about me... is that why you don't feel the need to kill me? Is that why you haven't killed me yet?"

"What makes you think I'm going to kill you at all?" he asked, and lowered the blade down into the handle, slipping it back in his pocket.

Turning the safety back on the gun, she remained up against the wall for another moment, regaining her breath. "Serial killers kill people because they're looking for a feeling... and they're looking to relieve that feeling."

"I'm not a serial killer," he interjected suddenly.

"Then stop _acting_ like one! Why didn't you kill me just now? It would have been so easy!"

The question didn't sit well with him. He reached back into his pocket once more, feeling for the knife. "Did you want me to kill you?" he asked gruffly, his face stark.

"No, God damn it!" he said, gripping her hair with both hands while still holding on to the pistol. "I want to know why you _didn't_!"

There was a stiffness in his face, but from where she was standing, she could hear the continuous, rhythmic sound of air exhaling from his nose. His mouth twisted into a scowl, and his hands stood balled into tight fists at his side.

She could tell that hers was a look of desperation, as she became hopelessly aware that even the simplest questions can house the most complicated of answers.

The two of them looked at each other for a few seconds, both brick walls... and just when it seemed like neither one of them was going to budge, he cracked. He cracked where Harley never would have expected him to crack. "Why are you asking me that? You want to have the upper hand for once? Is what's going on here emasculating you?"

Pure and utter confusion was the only way to describe the feeling that came next. "_What?_!" she asked in an outburst, her eyes looking off, as if searching for the answer in the empty air. "You think I want to know the answer – so that I can hold it against you, or that I can strip some kind of power away from you? So that I can exploit your weaknesses?" Although it might have been better to use her free hand, she pointed at him with the hand that held the gun. "You know, contrary to what you might think, not everyone is like you!"

"I know that! You think I'm an idiot?" he growled, jumping into what was turning into a sunrise screaming match. He took a few quick threatening steps toward her, and Harley felt her back stiffen in retaliation.

"You are an _idiot_! Because you automatically assume that empowering me would take power from _you_!" She gave him a far more violent shove then she had expected, and while it wasn't much, it was enough to cause him to slip backward on the wet grass under his feet. Responding to his lapse of balance she dropped the gun, reaching out to grasp at him somehow and ended up taking hold of his collar.

With the Joker hunched over the way he was, the two of them stood eye to eye... and stayed that way for some time. Then, from somewhere inside her, some voice spoke in the most sincere tone she'd heard fall from her own mouth. "You think that I think you need me? I know that you don't... you're the best one-man show in the country. But tell me that you _want_ me, and I will work miracles for you. I will make Annie Oakley look like a kid with a Nerf gun..." She took another breath and didn't give him even the glimmer of an opportunity to talk back. "Do that, and you won't have to hold a single knife to any throat again...because I can give you everything you just had without the bloodshed."

Their eyes were wide, seeming to crest over with the orange of the rising sun. They stared back and said nothing for a long, long while, until...

Standing up to his full height, the Joker frowned toward the rising sun, then turned to face the truck. "I can't..." he said firmly. "Pick up the gun, and get in the car."

She stood there for a minute, mist rolling off the dewy ground, the cold morning air seeping through her clothing. Her mind used it as an excuse for the full body shiver that came over her, which came with the added fear that she was in store for a very long drive home.


	45. Chapter 45: Gasoline

**[Note from the Author: Firstly, I want to thank you guys for your patience. This chapter turned out _way_ better than I had originally expected. I hope you all really enjoy it. Secondly, this chapter marks the beginning of my hiatus, so that I have some time to redevelop my queue of chapters so I can once again provide you guys with a weekly reading experience. You can expect chapters to return June 27th, 2011. Thank you in advance for the reviews and support. I'm going to do my best to get back to everyone to has reviewed and commented over the last little while. Enjoy!]**

Harley had expected that the two of them would fall back into the same complex and uncomfortable environment. The Joker took on an aura of evasion whenever a disagreement or dramatic episode took place between them; he would become the world's absolute least approachable person, and Harley was more than happy to oblige him in those instances. These lulls and surges between them had become commonplace...but the silences still nauseated her. Wanting to talk to someone who didn't want to talk to you was a hard pill to swallow.

But once the two of them arrived home after a silent trip, something very strange happened, something very strange indeed...

He acted as though nothing had happened.

"Did you plan on getting some shut-eye, or did you want me to make some coffee?" he'd asked, in almost a friendly tone as the two had come out of the elevator.

Surprised to hear his voice, Harley stumbled through a response. "Err... I ah..." she choked, but when he gave her a strange glance, she forced herself to take a deep breath and sort out a sentence. "Strangely, I'm not very tired..." she told him with a tiny smile.

He thumbed at the machine that sat sitting on the counter, the glass pot shining from Harley's continuing efforts to keep the kitchen clean. "I'll make some coffee, then."

The rest of the day went off without a hitch. Their conversations were hardly anything to write home about, but there was no lack of friendly banter or comments about current events. At some points, the Joker even seemed patient enough to answer some of her questions, though she kept the subject matter as light as she could, considering what the night before had brought.

Harley couldn't help her curiosity. She kept wanting to ask him if this was some kind of forced camaraderie to keep the peace, but she knew better. The Joker, who loved an argument more than anyone, would have picked at the frayed edges of peace until the whole thing came undone. But she didn't push it. The Joker might have had a good time disturbing their peace, but Harley did not. It was happy and friendly...so much so that Harley sometimes wondered if the whole incident hadn't been just a figment of her imagination.

Sorely, she hoped that it was.

The days seemed to pass, one after another, and somehow the tone of the place didn't change. The Joker's lair, once a place of emotional turmoil and raised voices, had turned into a kind of 'Smallville' in Harley's mind. If their lives together had ever come close to mimicking a 'Fifties sitcom at a particular moment, this would most likely be it. Everything seemed different, though everything looked the same as before: he reclined on the sofa, watching the day's events unfold, and she raced around the place, coming up with ways to keep herself busy.

For the most part they stayed out of each other's way... and lingering in her heart, Harley wondered if this was how things were destined to play out between the two. Maybe she'd gone through all the trouble for nothing. The Joker had proven himself more than capable of breaking himself out of Arkham - how all of a sudden had her rescue run off in the wash?

It all seemed so long ago now. Maybe he had already forgotten.

Having emptied the contents of the refrigerator, Harley now knelt uncomfortably on the mesh surface of the mezzanine floor, scrubbing the glass paneling inside. It was Chore 85 on her self-made list of things to do, and although the Joker never asked her to do any of it, he hadn't seemed eager to stop her either.

Until now. "You enjoying playing 'Holly Housewife', or would you rather be doing something else with your time?" he called out from the sofa, eyes still on the screens as he scribbled something down in his notebook.

Pushing some of her hair from her face with the wrist of her rubber gloved hand, she glanced at him, shrugged, and went back to scrubbing. "I don't know... it's something to do, you know? Otherwise what would I do? Kick it on the couch with you all day while you try to take notes without interruption?"

He glanced over at her with a piqued brow. "You're not my housemaid, Harley. What? You think I can't multitask? I'm watching four different televisions, for Christ's sake."

Harley chuckled. She was still amazed at that cognitive capability, and yet for some reason she'd tried to leave him to his own devices, thinking that she would just be bothering him. If one had been listening closely enough, it almost sounded as if he were extending an invitation to her, the way he made himself available... and the idea, though lovely and nearly touching, was somehow alien to her.

Nonetheless, she packed everything back into the fridge, and removed her rubber gloves with a loud _thwack!_ as they landed on the counter. Once she came to land on the opposite end of the sofa as he, she crossed her arms uncomfortably over her chest as her eyes scoured the screens. Floods in Vietnam, more suicide bombings in Pakistan, hearts racing as Commissioner Gordon announces afternoon press conference...Harley was surprised how remarkably easy it was to follow the closed captioning, as they moved slowly across the screen in black and white.

She turned slightly to look at him, and jumped as she found his eyes already upon her. "It's, uh... not as hard as I made it out to be," she told him, motioning toward the screen.

He shrugged. "After a while, you get used to it."

Shifting to get a little more comfortable on the sofa, Harley stretched out her legs toward him, the heels of her feet resting just a few inches from his left thigh. "This seems like kind of a boring job, compared to what you're known for. I thought you were a 'man of action'!" she said enthusiastically, waving her hands in the air to simulate an explosion.

The Joker chuckled, looking back to one screen. "Well, they say even the most exciting jobs in the world are boring ninety-percent of the time."

"Oh yeah?" Harley struck back with a hint of skepticism.

"Bounty hunters, crab fisherman, building demolition, police investigators... they look like fun on T.V. But all the planning takes twenty times as long as the actual execution. My job is kinda the same way... lots of planning, and only a few minutes of sheer, unadulterated joy," he explained, a higher pitch in his inflection as he became just a bit excited by the thought.

"Kinda sounds a bit like sex..." Harley said in a droll, direct tone.

His pen suddenly stopped scribbling. A pair of dramatically raised eyebrows were coupled with a set of sinfully draped eyelids when he turned to look back over at her. "Sweetheart..." he began in a kind of decadent tone, "if you're in it for the few minutes at the end, then you're in it for all the wrong reasons."

She only looked back at him with her own biting smile, before he swiftly turned his attention back to the televisions. "So, what are you waiting for?" she asked. "Careerwise I mean...you're just going to study up on when is the best time to capture the whole world's attention?"

With a frown and an almost playful scrunching of his nose, he shook his head. "No... just waiting for my so-called _co-worker_ to pull her head out of her ass and stop sweeping my floors. Once she decides she actually _wants_ to get involved, then we might be able to get a few things done."

There was that _we_ again.

Harley couldn't help but laugh and gaze off silently amused at his attempted jab. "Heh, well... you just don't seem like the type to take a partner."

He scoffed. "We really need to watch _Lethal Weapon_..."

She shrugged, watching her toes wriggle, as if that suddenly seemed more appealing than talking about some silly cop movie. "It's not a lack of interest, just...know-how..."

Harley's voice trailed off, and when the Joker turned back to see why, she appeared sucked into the lower left hand screen - which always displayed the Gotham City news network.

On the screen, Commissioner Gordon stood at a podium, a few members of the press visible in the first row. Slowly, the Joker reached for the controller, switching up the volume and muting an episode of _Scooby-Doo_. _"...making deliberate and swift attempts to apprehend the Joker before placing him in a high-security facility outside of the city limits." _

"_Why exactly was that done in the first place, Commissioner Gordon?_" asked one reporter, wearing a suit about two sizes too small. The other reporters leaned forward for a response, recorders eagerly stretched out.

"_Going into this, we knew that we'd be dealing with a defense based solely upon an insanity plea, which is why we placed him in the hands of the Arkham foundation, in order to discover any underlying methods to this madness,_" Jim explained.

Not an unsound explanation. The Joker knew that many perfectly sane criminals copped an insanity plea, thinking that they'd be held in a cushier joint than the big house. But the Joker knew better. Orderlies might not have been as strong as prison guards, but what they lacked in strength, they made up for in sedatives.

It wasn't more than a second before another reporter stood up. _"You mean Arkham Asylum? Where they're now saying that the Joker's costumed assailant, Harleen Quinzel, worked as a therapist?" _

Taking a large, deliberate breath, Jim gripped the side of the podium when he answered. _"I'm not going to deny the rumors that you've all heard. It's true that Dr. Harleen Quinzel was a psychologist at the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. It's also true that this was the same institution that the Joker was housed. Additionally, Dr. Quinzel is now listed as missing... and we do believe her to be apprehended by the Joker." _

"_She didn't look 'apprehended' to me!"_ another reporter called over the crowd from the back, and it sent the reporters into a frenzy.

"_Listen to me..."_ Jim said softly, waving his hands to calm the boiling crowd. When they refused to let up, he took a deep breath and called out, significantly louder. "_Listen to me_!" And suddenly you could have heard a pin drop. _"Listen, at this point we're only looking to ask Dr. Quinzel a few questions." _

There came an immediate and collective groan from the crowd, but Jim carried on in his most aggressive tone. _"We are working with the assumption that the Joker's gifts in manipulation have resulted in this lapse in Dr. Quinzel's judgment. This disregard of the law will not go unpunished, but the Gotham City Police Department is interested in apprehending the one who is truly responsible, and for that... we'll be looking for the Joker."_

The Joker just watched as Commissioner Gordon navigated the minefield that he and his comrade had left for him, but when he turned to her to offer a snide comment about it, he noticed that Harley wasn't watching the old man shake in his boots behind the podium. Inside, she sat with a look that could only be described as terror. She leaned forward on the sofa so sharply that her elbows rested on her knees, one hand covering her mouth as both eyes remained locked on the screen - not on Gordon, but someone else.

To the left of the podium, and right on the edge of the television screen, there was a woman. She was petite, well-dressed in a gray pinstripe skirt-suit. From the neck down, she looked very much like a lawyer, but her face was far too weary. Her hair was wild and coarse, but in a free-spirited, wild mustang kind of way, and not out of poor hygiene. The crow's-feet around her eyes were still gentle, and added only the aura of mystique and wisdom to her face. The Joker also took note of the full set of lips and great pair of legs.

His dark eyes moved back to Harley's, but her gaze hadn't moved from the older woman, who now shifted anxiously in her seat. Sliding over to sit beside her, the Joker pointed his eyes to the screen. "Who is she?"

The sound of his voice made Harley jump. "Who is who?" she asked, as if she didn't know she was about as transparent as cellophane.

He snickered, gesturing toward the well-dressed woman, who was now moving to stand up out of her chair. Before he even had the chance to ask again, Jim Gordon interrupted the two of them with an introduction.

"_Now, at this point we ask that there be no further questions. Most of the time in investigations like these... it's rare for family members of any victim to speak out in regards to the crimes committed."_ For a moment the Joker thought maybe this was the wife of an old orderly, or the mother of a young nurse who used to work at the asylum... but what Jim Gordon said next had to have been one of the most entertaining things he'd ever heard the commissioner say.

"_Mrs. Francine Quinzel has been more than cooperative with the GCPD, and graciously accepted when we asked if she could say a few words here today on her daughter's behalf." _

Gordon hadn't even finished his sentence when the Joker toppled over in laughter, his back pressed into the seat cushions, his hands draped over his chest in an effort to contain his laughter. Harley, on the other hand, was silent. Her flat expression remained fixed on the screen as the Joker's howling settled down

Francine Quinzel prepared to speak. Harley threw her hands down on her knees, but just as she was about to stand, the Joker threw his legs over her thighs, strapping her in place like the restraints on a rollercoaster. "Oh no you don't," he croaked. "You're in for one fun ride..."

Francine cleared her throat as she stepped up to the podium, her voice wavering slightly. Nerves, along with emotions, painted themselves on her face. _"My name is Francine Quinzel, and the woman in the video tape that the press has been circulating is my daughter, Dr. Harleen Quinzel – though her friends and family have always called her 'Harley'. Harley graduated at the very top of her class from Gotham University just two years ago, and __almost immediately secured an internship at Arkham Asylum. Believe it or not... it was a job she always wanted. Harley has a very soft spot for the mentally ill..."_ Here the woman had to pause, choking back tears. _"...Harley's passion for helping the mentally ill became her quest after she lost her brother to suicide, provoked by schizophrenia, when she was only a freshman in high-school." _

Empathy was not something the Joker had. Pity, sympathy... these things had always managed to elude him, but when he felt the muscles in Harley's abdomen contract, and watched as she covered her face to conceal her sobbing, there _was_ something like a pinprick that struck the center of his chest. Regardless, his legs kept Harley locked in her seat as her mother continued.

Her voice, which was probably a harsh Queen's accent in normal moments, was soft as she recounted her daughter's passion. _"Harley is so incredibly intelligent and talented. I find it impossible to believe that she would be at all capable of any of this if it had not been for the Joker's involvement in some way." _

Harley's hands moved up over her face to smooth out her hair, anger sharpening her usually delicate features. "That's pretty rich," she hollered at the screen, "coming from someone who's married to a murderer!"

"_Please stop this maniac before he decides to strike again. I have no doubt that he will kill my daughter if given the chance... and I will give anything to know that she's safe. If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of my-"_

Before Francine could finish and before the Joker could stop her, Harley'd picked up the remote control and flung it with all of her strength at the screen.

It left a spider web of fractured glass, the image still faintly visible as the remote fell to the ground. Using all the strength she could muster, Harley shoved the Joker's legs from off of her, which sent him rolling from the sofa and onto the ground. She was making a beeline for the bedroom stairs by the time he'd clambered upright.

"You never told me about that!" he cooed darkly with a pointed finger.

"Why would it be any of your business?" she asked, still thundering toward the stairs. It wasn't until the Joker rushed after her to grab her arm that she turned to look at him.

"If I asked you once," the Joker said. "I asked you a thousand times _why_ you wanted to be a head-shrinker. And you never told me."

She wrenched her wrist from his grip. "You might think you know everything about me, but you didn't until today."

"Does that make you feel powerful?"

"No!" she screamed at him before covering her face once more. There was that pinprick again, right in the middle of his chest... it was uncomfortable, but it made him all the more aware of what was happening in front of him. After a few seconds, she withdrew a large shaky breath, and lifted a few tears from her cheeks with the palm of her hand.

"Why would I have told you? Because then you'd know what even I don't want to know! People don't get into this business without a few skeletons in their closet, you know? Well...this is mine," she told him sharply, holding onto the railing as she made her way up the stairs. "Believe it or not, before I met you, I had motivations and dreams...I made promises to people. I planned on keeping them."

"He was the boy in the picture," the Joker said. "That photograph."

She froze, then turned back to glare back at him. "I don't have any photographs of my brother."

"Sure ya do..." he said, trotting past her and up the stairs. "I stole it from you that night I was at your apartment."

Curiosity flooded the anger from her face, and Harley followed the Joker up the stairs, into the bedroom. On the wall across from the bed, there was a large wardrobe which the Joker had thrown open as she entered. He dove into the inner breast pocket of one of his vests, checking both sides before moving on to another. "I know I had it here somewhere..." he mumbled.

"This isn't important," she huffed angrily. "What _is_ important is that my fucking mother just got the whole city to sympathize with me, when that wasn't the plan..." She paced about the room as the Joker hurriedly sifted through his pockets, removing bits of lint along the way. "Now everything is ruined."

"What are you yammerin' on about? Nothing is ruined! You want Gotham City to know why you did what you did, all you have to do..." He trailed off, as his hand wrapped around an object in the third vest he'd reached into, and removed the scuffed and folded photograph. "...is _tell_ them."

"Tell them how? Take out a spot on the nightly news?" she said sarcastically, though her features softened when she saw the picture he held out for her. Gingerly taking the photograph from him, she sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes scanning over it.

Harley hadn't seen this picture in ages. Her father had taken it with some expensive camera that he'd bought just for the occasion; she remembered only because she could still hear her mother's voice in her head, wondering where he had found the money to pay for such a contraption. He'd told to to shut up and snapped the picture. It was the summer before Harley started high-school, and she was only fourteen.

"Why did you take this?" she asked, looking at him as he sat beside her.

"I dunno..." He shrugged, a weary smile playing on his mouth. "I thought you looked pretty."

"Joker, I was _fourteen_..." she said with just a hint of disgust in her tone, but he only shrugged again, palms turned up to the ceiling.

"C'mon, you don't _look_ fourteen in that picture," he said, gesturing to the red lips and hair that had been straightened with a clothes iron. Harley couldn't help but chuckle as she regarded her younger self. It left like a lifetime ago.

"What was his name?" the Joker asked suddenly.

It was a question that might otherwise have made her burst into tears... but somehow, the fact that he was asking made it feel like progress. "His name was Daniel... I remember boys at school used to tease him; he was blond, not very masculine. They used to call him Babyface or Danielle... things like that. I got my mother's dark hair... but Dickey, my dad, he had dirty blond hair, a couple shades lighter than yours, that was just about platinum when he was a baby." She paused and beamed a smile down onto the photograph, just like the sunrays that had once bleached it from where it had hung on the refrigerator in her family home. "That's why I bleached my hair... so he wouldn't feel alone."

"Heh..." the Joker grinned, and counted off their names on his fingers. "Danny, Dickey, Franny, Harley..."

Her mouth spread into a large smile and she nodded. "Yeah, that's right... that's what we were, well... before everything got broken. The year after Danny died, my father went to prison, and it was just my mother and I until I went off the university." Sadness struck her again, the thought causing her to bite down on her bottom lip. "That woman's been through hell... how can I..."

"Don't go around apologizing for yourself!" he cut her off, and snatched the photograph from her hands. "You said yourself she never saw the reasoning behind it. Well, you and I are going to tell Gotham _together_." He shoved the photograph into his pocket and made his way back down the stairs, toward the main floor.

She watched him go, wide-eyed and ever-impressed by his ability to end a conversation in its tracks. "Where are you going?"

Stuffing both hands in his pantspockets, he turned his head over his shoulder. "Going to get us a spot on the evening news."

Quickly, she trotted down a couple steps after him and took a firm hold of both banisters - and leaned forward to plant a very express kiss on his cheek. "Thank you..." she said, with a tiny little pout that sprouted into a grin.

He rubbed his cheek, feigning a disgusted glare. "For what?"

As soon as he removed his hand, she gave him another one, which was enough to break his grin free.

* * *

Bruce Wayne hated press conferences.

The only thing they seemed to accomplish in this town was confusing the public into believing something that would keep them in the dark, but keep them alive. It had happened before, when Harvey Dent had "confessed" to being Batman, and it was happening again, as Francine Quinzel convinced a room full of press that her daughter was as innocent as a newborn. Both of them had lied, but Quinzel might have taken the press' attention off her daughter long enough for the police to do a proper investigation.

Regardless, he'd tried to convince Gordon not to go through with the idea. "Holding a press conference in support of his accomplice's innocence will only push the Joker to prove that she's not," Batman's gruff voice had spoken over the phone. Not with the suit, though; Alfred had been watching across the kitchen, and curled his lips inward to restrain his laughter over the strange scene.

"It wasn't my idea..." Gordon's voice was metallic through the phone, frustrated. "Francine Quinzel is going stir crazy. The profilers think it might be a good tactic to make Harleen's psyche feel guilt for what she's done. It's been two weeks and we've heard nothing from the Joker or Harleyquinn about the incident at Arkham Asylum. You'd think he'd be gloating by now."

But Bruce knew that the Joker wasn't interested in playing head games right now. The escape from Arkham might have dealt the city a blow, but he could tell that it wasn't exactly something the Joker was going to spring back from immediately, especially now that he was carrying Harley's extra weight.

This afternoon, Bruce and Alfred had both been standing in the rustic kitchen, watching the press conference on the small thirteen-inch that Alfred had placed there for such occasions. Bruce had huffed his frustration, and walked off into the cave halfway through. He could feel the old man's sympathetic eyes on him as he left.

There wasn't much left to ponder. Short of Harley's outburst that last night at Arkham, there wasn't any proof of Harley's mental state one way or the other. She might have had a psychotic break... or she might have been completely sane. It was impossible for him to tell.

Somewhere deep down, Bruce was praying that the Joker _would_ stage some kind of an attack, just so he could see what she was truly like now... just so that he could know if she was guilty or not. Until he knew for sure, he had to keep reminding himself that she stood against him, when before things could have been different.

Gordon had been good enough to give Batman copies of the entire case file for him to peruse, but it wasn't exactly like he was investigating the identity of a culprit. Quite the opposite: Harley had made herself so visible, it was as if she _wanted_ everyone to know that it had been her. Indeed, the most shocking piece of footage from the Arkham tapes had been the moment after Harleyquinn had finished bludgeoning a guard to death with his own mallet. She'd turned, looked directly into the camera with that vibrant bright red smile, and winked like she was blowing a kiss to her sweetheart.

In a way, she might have been doing just that.

He'd seen these tapes dozens of times in the last week. Alfred had expressed concern over his own mental state when Bruce had formed a habit of watching them whenever he woke up. "You keep starting your day off that way, _you're_ the one who's going to turn into a homicidal maniac," he'd told him in jest, but Bruce thought maybe it would do just the opposite.

There had been one other person that he wanted to save as much as Harley... and he'd failed then.

He wouldn't fail this time.

The case file sat on the control panel in the cave. It felt like swiss cheese; Bruce had all but torn it to shreds, trying to extrapolate every piece of information he could from it. And although the _who_ was not the problem, the _why_ kept him awake at night. _Why_ the hell would she do such a thing? _Why_ would she risk her life to save the Joker's?

In the pit of his stomach, he prayed that Alfred had been wrong when he told him that the only thing more dangerous than a mad man was "the woman who loved him." When he'd said it... the word _love_ had struck him like the Joker's crowbar. With his elbow propped up along the stainless steel panel and his cheek laying heavily in his palm, Bruce swiveled back and forth in his chair, flipping through the pages of the file, hoping in vain that maybe this time he'd find something new.

A loud, sudden buzzing sound interrupted his search, and Bruce leaned over to activate the speaker phone calling in from upstairs. "Yes?" he asked, clearly bored. Maybe at least he'd have Alfred's beef roast to look forward to, since nothing else seemed to be working tonight.

"Master Wayne," Alfred started slowly, the sound of the television playing in the background. "It would be very good of you to put on the local news, right now..."

The way the old man spoke told Bruce that whatever was playing on the screen would be of particular interest to him. Brows furrowed in curiosity, Bruce punched in a simple command, the large screen in front of him switching on and cutting into the television feed.

The reporter staring back at him on the screen spoke solemnly. "...tape that we are about to show you arrived to our premises, unmarked, from a courier this afternoon. What you are about to see may be disturbing for children, and we urge viewers with families to either change the channel, or step away from the television."

The screen changed, and there was the Joker.

He sat behind a wide table, one which looked very similar to the one Bruce remembered meeting him at as Batman, all those months ago. He inspected his fingernails, elbows propped on the table, lips curled inward as if he was trying to determine what to say. His outfit looked crisper and cleaner than it had before, as if he'd just pulled it from a drycleaner's bag... even his tie was on straight, and not as tight as he usually wore it. He sat like that for a few seconds until he shot an intimidating glance at the camera, his trademark squint inspecting the lens as if it had been a person's face. Bruce remembered it well; it was the same way the Joker had always looked at him.

Idly, the Joker's hand came up to scratch his ear, and he began. "Something..._alarming_ has been brought to my attention..." he said darkly, the fingers of his other hand drumming on the table top. "This something is... well, maybe it's something that's happened to you." His elbow still propped on the table, he stretched his fingers out, and began speaking faster as he migrated toward his point. "Ya ever tell a kid not to touch the stove? You can't be held responsible if the little parasite burns himself... even if you were the one who put the idea in his head in the first place."

Suddenly, the Joker sprang into a fit of laughter, causing Bruce to involuntarily shift his chair back away from the screen. "If it hadn't been for _you_, maybe he wouldn't have even considered the stove in the first place - but does it still make you responsible?"

He seemed to consider the question before looking offscreen, motioning for the camera. There was a moment where the image shook as if some terrible earthquake had suddenly befallen him, but corrected when the Joker trained it on himself again. "Some of you out there in _T.V. Land_ seem to think that I'm manipulative," he pouted. "Even going so far to say that word, 'brainwashing'!" An audible gasp that escaped him, followed by a deep, eerie chuckle.

The camera spun about the gray room and settled on a figure who stood by the door. She was so unrecognizable that Bruce had to look twice. Standing by a metal door, arms folded behind her, the sole of one of her shoes pressed against the wall she leaned on, Harley had never looked more different. Her long platinum blond hair had only a whisper of dark roots, done in a hairstyle that was wildly different than the dark tightly drawn buns she'd become known for. Thick bangs tickled dark lashes, and her long tresses came to rest far below her collarbone. She wore a white t-shirt with a black bra underneath. and a pair of tight black riding pants that ended just above the ankle.

"Well, then, I have someone for all of you to meet," the Joker said from offscreen. "Say hello, Harley."

"_Hello Harley_," she chirped to him sweetly, her bright red lips offering him a large smile.

The Joker moved to stand beside her, and angled the camera in such a way that the two of them could both be seen. His proximity to Harley made Bruce's skin crawl, and he wanted badly to jump through the screen to choke the clown, but he could only watch in horror as the two of them casually bantered.

"Very cute. Now, be a good girl and look right here into the camera, don't be shy..._thaaaat's_ right. Now, would you say that I was _brainwashing_ you?" the Joker asked with another pout.

She chuckled at him and shook her head. "Well, that's pretty insulting, suggesting that it would be easy to brainwash someone like me..." she said with a bit of a huff. "So, I'd have to say – no, I don't think you were brainwashing me."

"No?" he asked, as if almost surprised to hear the answer. "Well, then what would you say?"

"We did what any two strangers would do if you put them in a room together. We talked." Harley's eyes flashed between the camera and the Joker as she spoke. Bruce frowned. Regardless of the cutesy tone and her shift in eye contact, so far, everything about Harley' communication with the Joker seemed sincere.

"Hmm... we talked about what?" he asked and then pouted once more, his tone heavily laced with sarcasm. "About my _feelings_?"

The idea was enough to make Harley laugh. "Feelings?" she asked, "Yours? Oh hell no! No, no... mostly, about how each of us viewed the world. Society, people, ideas, things like that."

"I see, I see..." he said, interested, as if he hadn't been there. At this point he turned the camera directly on her, moving around her as if he were handling a photoshoot for a supermodel. "So then, Miss _Harleyquinn_...why did you do exactly what you did?"

"Hmm..." She turned to look away from the camera, her blue eyes shyly downcast, but the Joker urged her onward by extending a hand to gingerly lift her chin.

"It's a tough question... take your time," he said to her almost gently, and Bruce fought back the urge to put his fist through the screen.

Harley looked up at him wide-eyed and shook her head. "Oh no! It's not that it's hard, it's just so...easy. That's the problem. I did it so that _certain_ people could see how easy it is for just about anyone to do a terrible thing, even – and especially if they're not terrible people."

"_Terrible?_" the Joker asked from behind the camera.

"Well..." Harley giggled and turned her head, blushing ever so slightly. "...what is _perceived_ as terrible."

"Right...so, you wanted to act as an example, but to who? Who did you want to..." And here he used the camera to pan over her petite frame from where she stood, still leaning against the wall. "...expose yourself to?"

Harley rolled her eyes, but her smile never faded. "Well, to be completely honest?"

"Hmmm..." He groaned his satisfaction. "I _love_ honesty."

She laughed, and almost impossibly stretched her smile out even wider than before. "To be _honest_..." she started again, her tone a little darker this time. "I wanted all of Gotham to see. I wanted to... soften the blow, for when they find out who the real manipulators are..."

Something she wasn't saying had sent Joker into a fit of laughter, pointing the camera toward the ceiling and spinning in a circle before he brought the lens back down to her grinning face. "All right, all right...now why don't you do Gotham a favor and tell them exactly _who_ lied to them?"

Bruce froze.

Would she do it? Right then and there, would she do it? There was no doubt in his mind that the Joker had spent the last six months telling Harley exactly what had happened that last night when Batman had left him swinging from that skeleton of a building. He held his breath, wondering if the names would fall right then from her perfect red lips.

But instead she pouted, and shook her head. "Aw... c'mon, Puddin'." Bruce didn't know what was worse - that name, or the words that she hadn't said. "You wouldn't want me to ruin the surprise, now would you?"

"I was hoping you would say that..." He purred, moving around her once more, her heading turning to follow him. "Now, before we go... can you answer me one more little question?"

"Of course," she chirped with a casual shrug.

"A lot of people out there, they think I'm treating you badly... God only knows what some of these sickos are thinking. Am I holding you here against your will?" he asked, in a sugary tone that rid Bruce of any craving for Alfred's roast beef.

Harley looked past the camera to him and smiled gently, the angle of the camera changing ever so slightly. "Me? Against my will?" Then, in the softest, most loving tone imaginable, she said, "Of course not, Sugarpop! I love it here."

With yet another deep chuckle, the Joker stretched his hand out to gently tweak the girl's chin. "Me too, Harley-girl. _Meeee_ too..."

The screen immediately flashed back to the news report. Bruce muted the screen, preferring instead to sit in silence for a moment as he took in everything he'd just seen.

It had been impossible for him to draw the conclusion on his own. Harley had always been the self-sacrificial type, and so the idea of putting herself on the line for someone like the Joker, after half a year of developing some kind of camaraderie with him, didn't really surprise him. What did surprise Bruce was that this man, who had been renowned for his vicious behavior toward everyone and everything, now put himself on camera, showing this woman a kind of tenderness. The way he'd delicately placed his hand under her chin to lend her confidence, the way he'd spoken to her, praised her, touched her... all of it suggested a relationship that was beyond Bruce's understanding. Had it been any other man, then he might have understood... but how could anyone form that kind of a relationship with the Joker? His chaotic soul made it impossible for anyone to truly know him... to truly trust him, but somehow she had and somehow he returned it.

Bruce wasn't sure how much time had passed when he heard the sound of footsteps coming up from behind him. When he turned in his seat, Alfred was leaning slightly on the door frame, watching Bruce with a sympathetic gaze. It seemed never to disappear today.

"How can she do it, Alfred?" Bruce asked, shaking his head.

"Do what, Sir?" he asked, taking a step into the room.

Bruce hesitated, then looked off, shocked at his own words before they even left his lips. "How can she love him?"

The old man was silent for a moment, carefully plotting this next statement, as he often did in moments of deep reflection. "I remember, back in London, during the War," he said, "the public was engrossed with Eva Braun. If we'd had the kind of tabloids that we have today, I'm sure her face would have graced many of them, just like the pictures of your friend grace the covers today. This idea was, how could such a beautiful woman... a _model_ in fact, have loved a man so dark and twisted?"

Bruce only shook his head. Nausea and confusion had struck him to the point where the only thing that he could do was cling to Alfred's words, in hopes that he could find some peace in them.

"The Joker is a man, and a man is more than just his politics and ideas," Alfred explained, gesturing to Bruce before he continued. "Who the Joker is to you and me and everyone else in Gotham is not who Miss Quinzel sees. She knows the murderer is there, but she can reach the man underneath, and that's what makes her so valuable."

"Than she's no better than him...she's just gasoline on the fire." Bruce muttered as he turned back to rewind the footage he had just seen. He could feel Alfred's gaze burning in the back of his skull, and letting out a heated sigh.

"Somewhere along the line, you got it into your head that your actions spoke louder than anything else in your heart." When Bruce turned to look at the old man again, he had his hand placed gently over the center of his argyle sweater vest. "Sometimes, regardless of actions, the root at heart is noble. I can't speak for Miss. Quinzel, but what I do know for sure is that evil men have cold hearts that take more warmth to melt."

He turned, his hand on the frame of the door as he moved to exit. "If that's true, what does that say of your old friend?" Alfred asked, giving his young Master a contemplative glance. "Dinner will be ready in five minutes."


	46. Chapter 46: TNT

**[UPDATE: I'm Back! I hope everyone's had a good month. I know that some of my readers are in college, and I hope that everyone's marks were great! For those of you just wrapping up a year of High-School, Congrats! This month was SUPER productive for me, and I've redeveloped my queue of chapters. You know what that means? That means that I will be providing you a new chapter, every Monday! It's really been my goal to get back to posting every week, something I've not been able to do for a long time. Thank you so much for supporting me during this tumultuous time in my life. You guys are amazing! Please let me know what you think of Chapter 46!]**

The small room the Joker had sectioned off in the warehouse was dusty and smelled of fresh drywall and stale paint. Harley was happy to leave it once the camera had been turned off. Initially she had protested to being filmed, but gave in once the Joker explained his intention. She'd never really been one for acting, but was pleased when she realized that there hadn't been any involved. Even so, the Joker appeared impressed with her apparent skill as the two of them stepped back into the shaky freight elevator.

"Not bad, kiddo..." he said, pulling his gloves off by the fingers and curling them a couple times to stretch.

"Huh?" Harley didn't really understand. Although charming, she hadn't done anything besides act naturally – anything else would not have been genuine.

He looked at her with a lighter, pleased expression. "I said you did good. You almost had _me_ going for a moment there! Some people, you get them in front of a camera and they turn into bumbling idiots," he said, waving his hands around with a frown.

She didn't quite know how to process that. She'd only received praise from the Joker a few times... and each time it confused her more than anything else he'd done before. But, there was something she found insulting about his compliment...

"Did you think I was acting?" she asked him.

He gave her a strange look, but didn't answer. Instead, he pulled open the dual elevator doors and led her back into the apartment. The two of them watched their little indie film together on the six o'clock news, and the Joker could not have been more pleased with the result. He bounced joyfully on the couch, his ego sucking up every minute of it. Harley watched it with the melancholy of a child who had learned that all the myths of her childhood just weren't true.

The video was cute, flirtatious, gritty, even funny on a certain level... but the Joker had been acting. Harley hadn't. That was the _really_ disturbing part.

While she found it entertaining the first two or three times, the subsequent fifty that the Gotham City News ran it, she found herself growing more and more contemptuous of the Joker's feigned affection in the video. She found herself wondering about all those times in Arkham, anytime a sweet little line would come pouring from his mouth like honey. It wasn't often, and so Harley had known it wasn't the characteristic charm of a psychopath. She didn't usually consider herself naïve, but maybe it was to consider his affection to be genuine.

This upset her far more than the footage could.

His laughter died down considerably after the first few airings, but even several hours later, he watched it with the same level of attention he had the first time around – his energy born anew when the national news networks had picked it up.

"Is this how much you love the attention?" she finally snapped at him, lifting herself up from the sofa with a frustrated huff.

Giving her another strange look, he hadn't quite managed to croak out a sentence before she was rushing up the stairs like some teenaged girl who had sass-mouthed a parent. Harley went to sleep to the sound of the Joker still chuckling at what she now sorely wished had been a snuff film.

The next morning, having slept surprisingly well, she bounced down the stairs prepared to place the whole ordeal behind her. Harley's insecurities surrounding the Joker's affection for her had largely gone undisturbed, until he'd begun to exhibit affection himself. There were only little glimpses here and there – beyond the occasional look, _sometimes_ they included the countertop in her apartment... she blushed at the thought. Sometimes she was convinced the recent lack of attention was due to the fact that he had conquered her in some way, and now the chase was over. A long time ago, a guy she'd dated in college told her that it wasn't so much the '_having_' as it was the '_wanting_'...

She never called him back.

But with the Joker, there were moments that laced her memory where she remembered her heart fluttering around in her chest, or her pulse racing. Harley still felt this way. The parts of their video that most would find disturbing, she found touching; at the time, she'd even believed them to be genuine. Having the camera trained on her for so much of it was a crime, she thought. They'd never see the small grin that played on the Joker's twisted mouth as he regarded her in the viewfinder, and they wouldn't know what he looked like when the suit was off and the sweats were on.

Then again...she wondered how much she really knew anyway.

Another wave of frustration took the spring out of her step when she reached the end of the stairs. The Joker was still on the couch, coffee cup in hand, watching as now all three news stations played the tape in unison.

"_Okay_!" she sounded off, nearly causing the Joker to choke on a sip of coffee. "Tell me what it is that you like so much about this home movie before I get Roger Ebert on the phone for his opinion. You've seen this more than I've seen the _Friends_ finale."

"You watched _Friends_?" the Joker asked, snickering to himself before turning back to the screens.

With both her hands resting on the sofa's backrest, she watched for a moment before trying him again in a less aggressive tone. "No, really...what do you like so much about this?"

"Mmm... I like it because, when I watch it... I know _exactly_ what people are thinking about it."

"And what are people thinking? That _maybe_ I'm not as innocent as I seem?" she asked with an arched brow, coming around the couch to curl up in her usual spot. "That was the point, wasn't it?"

Here he looked at her with a tiny grin. "Oh, Miss Quinn, we did so much _more_ than that," he purred, gesturing toward the screen. "We single-handedly frightened the bejeezus out of the entire police force...particularly your _precious_ Commissioner Gordon." He looked almost disappointed when one of the screens moved back to its regular news report, but within a few seconds something else had captured his attention scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

She resented his '_precious_' comment, but perhaps the Joker had seen some hidden meaning in the tape that Harley had overlooked. "Well? What are they thinking?"

Breaking from his trance, he turned his attention back to her and gave her a very soft glance that brought pink to Harley's face. "They think we're in love..." he said, in a lower pitch than she was used to hearing from him. "And because of that, they think I 'consider you an equal.'"

"Well, we both know that's a load of garbage..." she said unenthusiastically.

"Maybe so... but Gotham doesn't know that, and neither does Gordon. You might not have been at this very long, but y'know, you killed more people in a single night than I have." Biting his bottom lip, he chuckled a bit. "You see, that's what makes us such a powerful combo. I'm the brains, and you're the muscle – real bit of role-reversal in a male/female relationship, huh? It's not very conventional, and people are afraid of things that break the norm."

"The muscle?" Harley asked with a bit of desperation in her voice. "_Me_? Are you out of your damned mind? I just learned how to fire a gun."

Standing, the Joker shook a finger at her. "C'mon now... you're not giving yourself enough credit. Besides, you've come this far, surely you can be the sexy, unruly, sidekick with a violence fetish. Sure, I take out the donut-eatin' cop or the putz head reporter, but I'm not a trigger happy kind of guy."

"_Sexy?_" She shook her head. "And what do you mean you're not '_trigger happy_'? You nearly killed over seven hundred people in one night."

He seemed shocked to hear this, and placed a hand over his heart before explaining himself. "Not with my own two hands! There were _bombs_ involved."

Before she could say much else, the Joker was making his way to the stairwell toward the second level mezzanine. "Where are you going?" she called after him, hurrying to her feet and following.

He bounded up the stairs two-by-two, making his way to the drafting table drawer where he tossed all of his notebooks after he'd filled them. "I'm _going_ to give you an opportunity to prove yourself," he explained idly as he sifted through the dates written on the corner of each cover.

"_Again_?" she asked vehemently.

He looked up to her with a grin before flipping through his selected book. "Always..." he replied, scanning the pages for something in particular. After finding it, he stopped to explain himself. "It's illegal to publicize or advertise the demolition of a building so close to the actual event, alright? Sometimes you'll see a crowd gathered around a demo site for the entertainment value, but to announce a demolition less than two weeks before it is against the law."

"Why?" Harley asked, wondering where he was going with this.

He nodded his head, wide-eyed in thought. "Well, mostly because they don't want random people around when they blow up the building, just in case idiots wander inside. But also because it usually takes at least ten days to properly wire a building for implosion, and it leaves pounds and pounds of explosive just sitting around in an empty building..." With an eager grin spreading over his face, he scanned the page some more until he found the name of the demolition company responsible for the job. "Now, all heavy explosives are regulated by the ATFE..."

"ATFE?" Harley asked, obviously unfamiliar with the acronym.

The Joker appeared wholeheartedly disappointed by this. "Seriously? Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives? You know, the government agency that hassles you at the airport if you try to bring a pack of cigarettes back from France?" he asked, as if either of them had been caught in such an act. "Anyway! Since the sale of explosives is regulated, it's pretty much impossible for me to actually buy any through some secret channel...they always leave a trail of some sort. Buying them on the black market is too much of a hassle, it's expensive, and the people you buy them from rat you out at the first whisper of trouble. It's less of a pain in the ass if I steal them myself... more fun that way too."

There was a moment of revelation in Harley's head and a feline grin formed around her white teeth. "Ahh..."

Pleased to see that she was catching on, he continued. "I just watched a news station break the law – the scroller at the bottom of the screen read '_Old Creemore building set for demo Wednesday in Downtown Gotham_'. I remember hearing word right after we got here... so I wrote everything down."

Though impressed by his knowhow, Harley was apprehensive. "But don't they drill into walls and scatter the explosive? The demolition is in a couple days. If you're looking to steal them, then you're not going to have the time, and even if you did they're going to let you just waltz in and take it...and I'm sure they have a security company watching the place for just that purpose."

"Yeah, some schmucks they pay for twelve dollars an hour aren't going to take a bullet to protect explosives owned by some billon-dollar demolition company. Besides, I'm not interested in the stuff they put in the walls. You're right, that's too hard to fish out." He reached into the wicker basket he had beside the drafting table, pulling out a large sheet of blue paper and spreading it out over the table.

"Hold that..." he said to her, and she held down a corner to help him free up one of his hands. With it, he grabbed a red sharpie. "Do you know what you're looking at?"

Harley looked down at it. It looked like a blueprint of some sort, but she wasn't familiar with most designs of this type.

"This is a schematic for a demolition. The old Commonwealth building they demo'd about five years ago," he explained, and suddenly the memory came flooding back to her.

"I remember that! The lower east side of downtown was covered in dust for weeks. They told people to wear masks as they walked around," she reflected.

"Right. So, yeah, on a taller building they'll place lower grade explosives on every floor, but they'll place larger playloads here," the Joker said, as he circled large support columns at the base of the building, "and here..." He circled a few more toward the top. "They detonate the ones in the center, and then move upward toward the ones at the top, and gravity pulls the whole thing inward."

"Alright, well the Creemore building is, what... twenty stories high?"

"Twenty-four," he corrected her, eyes still scanning the blueprint.

"Right, twenty-four. So, how much explosive would you need to implode a building that big?" she asked, leaning over the table in an attempt to get his attention.

Finally, his eyes leaving the paper, he thought about it for a moment. "Mmm.. I'd say anywhere between six and seven tons. One to two tons scattered around the building, and four to five tons in the payloads."

"Ha! Are you kidding me? How do you plan to put this together in just a couple days, then make up to five tons of explosives disappear before the cops show up?" she asked him, her mouth hanging open in utter bewilderment. He really _was_ insane if he thought himself capable of pulling this off with such a small crew.

"Oh, I've pulled off stunts like this before. This ain't my first rodeo, cowgirl..." He rolled up the schematic and speared it back into the wicker basket.

"I think you're forgetting that this is _my_ first rodeo, cowboy!" she hollered after him as he calmly made his way down the stairs.

He simply shrugged. "I think this will be a wonderful opportunity for our debut, wouldn't you say?" he asked, casually flopping back on the couch as the girl chased after him.

"Joker, I'm dead weight! I'll have no idea what I'm doing out there!"

"No matter... if you're _dead _weight than you'll end up _dead_. With any luck, you'll follow my instructions and manage to survive." His tone was a little too aloof for Harley's liking, as he crossed his arms behind his head.

"Joker!"

He opened one eye, but then grinned and closed it again. "Consider this a test, hmm?" he asked and then lifted his hand, reaching into his pants pocket for a set of keys. "Here, do me a favor and run down to the car. When I first heard about the demo, I asked Bosco to get a copy of the schematic from the Gotham Library. They should be in the backseat. Go get them and we'll take a look at them, hmm?"

The mere mention of doing something together made her self-doubt flutter out the window like a trapped bird searching for freedom. She'd do anything gladly, so long as it didn't have anything to do with dying. When he tossed her the keys, they landed in her hand with a gentle jingling sound. "You think I'll make it out alive?"

His eyes still closed, his mouth morphed into a twisted grin. "We'll just have to see about that, now won't we?"

* * *

Ten minutes.

That's how long it had taken before Harley finally gave up. Ten minutes and those supposed schematics that Bosco was supposed to have left in the car were nowhere to be found. She'd checked everywhere - the back seat, underneath the back seat, the trunk, even the glove compartment (knowing that they couldn't possibly fit). For something that should have been in plain view, it was impossible that she could have overlooked anything... at least, that was what she'd tell the Joker once she made it back upstairs.

Jumping up to close the SVU's large truck, Harley let out a defeated sigh and couldn't help but feel bad for the Joker's go-to guy. Chances are he would never hear the end of it... if he still had ears at that point.

She stood there for a moment, piecing together the sentence that she feared would ultimately throw the Joker into an uncontrollable rage. As she pondered, her eyes scanned around the warehouse, never having taken a good look at it on her own accord. The place was lined with wooden skids, though certainly nowhere near full. In fact, only the portion that led from the car to the elevator was lined with products on either side, creating a kind of wide corridor in the massive space. The skids ran five rows deep, stacked one of top of the other until they were about twelve feet high. Some were clearly labeled, some were more ambiguous, layered with packaging slips in foreign languages, or strange WHMIS symbols that she'd never seen before. There couldn't have been more than a couple feet between each skid, creating a labyrinth that consumed half the warehouse in twists and turns. Beyond it was a massive open area that had been darkened by charcoal and smelled faintly of gasoline.

Emerging from the grid of stacked product, Harley knelt beside the darkened patterns in the concrete floor, brushing her fingertips over it. Her eyes brightened in revelation as a grey powder lifted up from the floor. '_Ash_...' she thought to herself rubbing the fine powder between her fingers. There were dark carbon burns underneath that licked out like flames. Hesitantly, she turned her gaze up to the ceiling, and couldn't help but feel a little frightened upon seeing the scorched steel.

Something large had burned here once upon a time, but why and exactly what eluded her.

Confusion evident on her face, she turned to make her way back up to the mezzanine. Before she could take a single step, the ever-constant buzz of electricity stopped. There was a crash as the massive overhead lights were extinguished, leaving her in a state of semi-darkness, only a small amount of light trickling in from the dusty windows that lined the walls far above her head. For a moment, Harley wondered if maybe there had been a power outage, standing still to allow her eyes to adjust to the eerie greyness draping everything in a monochromatic hue.

She felt fear creep into her heart. The place had this sort of post-apocalyptic stillness about it that haunted her. Suddenly she had an urge to bolt back upstairs and into the relative safety of her new home, as if she had been a child jumping a great distance onto her bed to avoid the clutches of some monster underneath.

Just as she was about to take her first step, the Joker's voice echoed out through the warehouse.

"Are you scared out there, little lamb? Out there _all _alone..."

He said it in a sing-song tone that radiated through the warehouse like some twisted lullaby. Hearing him nearly made her jump. She tried her best to think of why he would come down into the warehouse to retrieve her.

Carefully, Harley's eyes scanned the labyrinth without moving her head, refusing to show any desperation in seeking him out. Internally, she placed the pieces of this little puzzle together. Sending her down here to look for something that wasn't even in its place had appeared to be just a simple miscommunication, but now she was beginning to see that this had not been the Joker's goal.

"You lured me down here," she said flatly.

A buzzing, cackling laugh shrieked out over the warehouse like nails grinding over a chalkboard. Her eyes narrowed in anger upon hearing it. Without being able to see him, or have any idea where the sound of his voice was coming from, Harley sank deeper into her growing frustration. "Why?"

"I'm disappointed..." he said simply. "I brought you here thinking you were the lion you promised to become, and here you are... the _lamb_."

It had been so long ago, but Harley had no issue bringing that conversation back to the front of her memory. In fact, she might have been able to pinpoint it as the very moment her metamorphosis had begun – that day, pressed against the cinder block wall of his tiny cell, when he told her what he wanted from her was the woman in the red dress. That underneath everything she thought she was, the Joker had somehow seen a glimpse of this powerful, angry, unstoppable woman that she had always wished she could be. However, there was a certain level of confusion that she was experiencing now.

She thought she'd _been_ a lion, all along.

"What did you think? That you'd feed me the truth about Jim Gordon, and Batman... and suddenly I'd turn into your own personal ravenous dog, you could just keep on a leash? I can't..." she told him, wherever he might have been, her arms falling to her sides after a particularly defeated shrug.

Once again his laughter shot out like a lightning bolt, all but rattling the steel walls. "When you see me on the sofa, with my glasses on, writing in a notebook, do I look like I'm going to kill you?" he asked her, his now soft voice sliding off the walls, scattering in every direction.

It was true, the sight of him every morning was not the least bit threatening, and on several occasions Harley had actually thought it cute for him to be caught in such a way, though she'd never tell him that. "No..." she answered.

"But that doesn't stop you from knowing that I could at any moment."

Worryingly, Harley realized that there was also an abundant amount of truth to _that_ statement. No matter what the situation had been, there was always a tiny corner of her heart that had feared for her life when she was with the Joker. At first it had overwhelmed her, caused her sentences to swell up and burst from her mouth like a pent up volcano. After time the fear had subsided, but it had never really gone away...part of her hated it. And then part of her clung to that fear the way a cat might climb up your leg.

"So what is this?" she asked a few moments later. "Some kind of a test to see if the lion still lives?"

There was a dramatic shift the next time he spoke, and when he did it sounded as though his voice might have been coming from the far side of the warehouse, next to the truck she had left just a few moments ago. "Something like that... I'm not going to be protecting you, Harley. I need to know that you're capable of doing that for yourself... besides, do I really seem the type?"

There was a pause, his voice sounding as if was above her somehow. "All of a few weeks ago you were more than happy to put a bullet between the eyes of anyone who planned to stop you. What happened?"

Harley wasn't entirely sure... that night was something of a faded memory in her head. She remembered every detail, but it was faded in a kind of mist, as if it had been a dream. What she did know was once she'd got here, she'd become more than happy to slip right back into her life as Harleen Quinzel. She'd cleaned his apartment as if it were her own, she'd crawled into bed as if she'd slept there her entire life. Smiling to herself, she realized she wasn't entirely sure how to answer.

"It's exactly like I said... If you're just _dead_ weight to me, then you're better off _dead_." There was a darkness in his voice that otherwise would have caused Harley to shake in her shoes... but there was also something that came over her, something she didn't feel when she was cleaning off his desk top, doing his dishes, or scrubbing out his fridge.

She smiled, and looked up in the direction she felt his echoing voice reverberating. "You know..." she began in a plucky tone, rife with the air of confidence, "you really bring out the _worst_ in me."

Almost certain that she could hear an amused chuckle, Harley took off from where she stood in the open space of the singed earth and into the rows between the stacked skids, disappearing from sight. For a moment she was still, making sure to take shallow breaths, listening carefully for any sounds around her. She'd never been truly conscious of the Joker's ability to throw his voice, but as there was no way that he would be able to move that quickly from one side of the warehouse to the other, it must have yet another of his unmentioned skills.

Then, as if from nowhere, she heard a loud clattering sound, clearly a shaky metal staircase as the Joker came down them quickly, moving onto the main floor.

"Competition is tough, and positions are seldom available in my..." Here the Joker took a deep breath through his teeth, "..._organization_."

She could hear him beginning to skulk around the edges of the skids, but considering his proximity to her, he was incapable of confusing her with his little trick. "You know, you really have been doing me a favor with all your self-deprecation. You've made it really easy to figure out exactly whether or not there was a point to keeping you around." The sound of a folding knife snapping out of its handle cut off his sentence in a way that only the Joker could accomplish. "Now I wonder how easy you're going to make this... huh?"

She kept silent, but began deciding on what to say should she have the chance to give him an earful. Part of her knew this was a game, but it wasn't hard to see that the Joker was the kind of guy who played for keeps. If she couldn't prove herself now, then he would see no point in keeping her, and clearly her lack of action had frustrated him to the point where he felt the need to test her.

The Joker was intelligent... and Harley was his so called muscle. If she was going to beat him at his game, she was going to have to play her own hand and play it well. Thinking to herself for a moment, Harley silently slipped out of her shoes and listened to hear if he would speak again.

"I never really knew if you had it in ya..." he spoke, and the sound of his voice set Harley into action. "It's easy enough to stay angry for a couple weeks, enough to do in a few guards at the nut house... but what about now?" As she listened, she could tell he was in the row of skids next to her, but much further toward the elevator than she had been. "Were ya just another flash in the pan?" Carefully placing just the tip of her shoe in what would soon be his line of sight, she tiptoed off, hoping that he would soon make his way to where she had been.

The Joker shifted and moved easily around the stacked product, making it a challenge for Harley to avoid his line of sight. With her bare feet on the cement floor, Harley moved silently around the skids, still gauging his location as he continued to speak. "C'mon.. exactly how far do you think you can run like this, hmmm?" he asked. To Harley, his constant talking seemed foolish...being as close as he was to the ground, his voice acted as a beacon.

Her only reasoning was that he must have been trying to provoke a reaction out of her. It felt like a shot at her intelligence, but as he moved around each row, Harley could hear the growing frustration in his voice.

Light flashed from the side of the blade that he held, sending tiny reflections into the packaged boxes like some ill-placed disco ball. There was a moment where in her mind's eye, she could see the blade diving into her, her blood spilling out onto the floor to rest with the charred remains of God-knows-what in this forsaken warehouse in the middle of nowhere. For as much as she knew the Joker had been capable of killing her, she had not seriously considered it until just then... and somehow it had both terrified her, and yet it also seemed to be the only way she'd want to die.

Suddenly, she heard it. "Ah... _there_ you are," he growled. He'd stepped close enough to her bait in order to acknowledge it as such. Knowing she had to move quickly, she silently climbed atop the skid she had been hiding behind, hovering ten feet over the warehouse floor as she pulled herself over the edge and on top of the wrapped plastic.

Hearing the sound of footsteps coming ever closer, Harley dropped the second shoe to create the secondary diversion she needed to grab his attention. There he was, just a few feet below her, as he came around the corner like a bat out of hell. Harley was surprised to see him like this - in his full motif, make-up and all... intending to scare her into submission.

Now wasn't the time for submission. When he saw the second shoe on the ground he stopped and watched it in bewilderment, as if acknowledging that she had cornered him. From the top of the packaged skids, she pounced on him like the wild jungle cat he spoke of. The two of them tumbled to the ground, rolling out onto the empty warehouse floor in a clamoring struggle, the large folding-knife the Joker had been carrying spinning across the cement.

When the two had finally come to a stop, Harley found herself the victor, her thighs straddling his hips with her hands clasped tightly around his forearms. "Now _you_ listen to _me_!" she roared to him, as he watched her with a distinctly surprised expression. "You wanted a lion? Well, you _got_ it. I didn't put up with Jim Gordon's bullshit, and I'm not about to put up with any of yours." After a moment she released one of his wrists, sternly pointing her finger in his face. "Don't you _fucking_ move..."

"Y'see, _this_ it more like it! _This_ is what I wanted to s..." But before he could finish his sentence Harley had reached into the inner pocket of his vest and withdrew his small switchblade. Snapping it open, she held the very point of the blade a mere few inches away from his right eye.

Had the Joker been able to keep one eye on Harley and one on the knife, he might have done just that, but he must have had his doubts of her capability to injure him; he ended up turning his attention back up to her face. "Well, this is fun! What are you gonna do, stab me? Hey, maybe you can cut me up into itsy-bitsy squares, hmm? Make _chump-meat_ of the master, so to speak?"

But his reaction disappointed Harley, and soon her grip on him loosened, pulling the blade away from his face and folding it back into the handle. When she let go of his other wrist, he brought it down in front of him and rubbed it, feigning injury.

"What's it going to take for you to understand, huh...?" she asked him quietly, a mildly devastated look on her face. "I would jump from a burning ship into rocky oceans, or bungee-jump with dental-floss, if it would make you happy."

With one hand wrapped around the other's wrist, it took a moment for the gravity of her words to sink in. His face softened a little, almost as if he felt bad for threatening her, though she knew he didn't. "You said yourself that you're the brains of this organization. Now, I can produce a one man show, but...as you and I have both proved, breaking out of Arkham is hardly a difficult feat." She sighed and leaned over him, her blonde hair falling over her shoulder and gracing his cheek. "You want to steal five tons of TNT? I'll carry it out on my back with my shoes on fire if you want me to..."

The soft grey light that surrounded them trickled through that glass curtain of hair, casting long strange shadows on his face. Harley couldn't see the color of his eyes so much as she could see herself in their glassy surface. "All you have to do is tell me... but you're never going to find out how capable I am if you cut me loose," she said in a hushed tone as she raked her thumb across her throat.

"I'm not a man of faith, you know?" The feeling of his hands sliding up her thighs and to her hips was familiar, but the rush was significantly different this time. "Where I come from, talk is cheap. I needed a little _action_... I needed to see _something_ from you." At this point his own voice was raspy, calm, intimate, and it was more than enough to coerce her lips into spreading, revealing that smile she knew he loved so much.

"Well..." she purred, "I'm more than happy to show you anything you'd like to see..."


	47. Chapter 47: Heights

There was something militaristic about the way the two moved across the street toward Gambol's old bar. The recent rain shower had wrapped the world around them in a silver tinge, and the streetlights of Lower Eighty-Fifth Street touched the place with the strange orange hue of the inner city. The sound of Harley's high-heels clicked joyously as she followed after the Joker, who skulked across the road as quickly as he could without rushing.

The two said nothing to one another as they moved under the tattered dark awning that hung outside the front door, as if the place had once been some hoppin' speak-easy. As far as Harley could remember, the bars down here were out of the way and out of sight for a reason. Criminals had frequented these places, particularly back in the early 'Eighties, when it was still "cool" to be a gangster. Decades prior to that, before there was an Upper Eighty-Fifth Street, high-rollers used to bring their diamond-studded gals down here for a Gin Rickey or two. Every so often, what Harley's father had once called the '_swing-kings_' would come down here in their zut-suits and tommy guns to put on a show for the just-forming neighborhood gangs of early downtown Gotham.

They were all just charming little stories now... real crime in Gotham took on a very different face.

That face was the Joker's face, which tonight was as vividly terrifying as it had been back in what Harley was sure he would have called the good old days. She knew this would be the first time anyone besides herself and a select few would have seen of him since his escape. He was looking healthier now that he was out of Arkham; he had filled out his suit a little better since he'd last been in the asylum walls.

There was a tumultuous atmosphere as they entered the bar. Rowdy voices and cigar smoke filled the air, and Harley stopped in her tracks and looked about the place as the Joker carried on ahead. Rarely did bars and clubs look as enticing in the daylight as they did in the middle of the night. When Harley had first been here, the orange sun had been rising over the skyscraper-lined horizon. The place had looked like it hadn't been used in years. A thick layer of dust covered everything, and the wooden paneling on the walls reminded her of the basement she and her first boyfriend had made out in.

But now, this place was gritty, potent...and glancing around at the flickering neon lights, Harley got the distinct impression that she could drink a _lot_ of whiskey in a place like this.

Their driver, and the Joker's aforementioned go-to guy, Bosco, passed by Harley with a concerned glance. "You alright?" he asked, but Harley just nodded, pleased to be out of that stale warehouse and in the _slightly_ fresher air.

It had been a week since the two of them had been out of there, and it had been nearly three more since Harley had seen anyone besides the Joker. She was afraid that her social skills might have been twisted by spending so much time with such a force. But there was a thrill associated with getting out and seeing people that always enthralled her - so much so that Harley had augmented her style to mirror that of the Joker's

When she had stepped out of the bathroom, the Joker had done a double-take. Somehow Harley had managed to pull a piece out of her wardrobe that made even him jealous.

"Where the hell did you get that?" he asked her, straightening his tie as he came down the stairs. What he was referring to was a long-tailed tuxedo jacket with a cinched waist and a large silk lapel.

She straightened her own tie of blood red satin in a piece of shattered mirror, which hung on the back of the bathroom door. "One of the only girls in my sorority who didn't hate my guts was a lesbian. Her mother, who was incredibly supportive – and incredibly rich - threw her and her long time girlfriend a gigantic civil union, of which I was on the '_groom's_' side."

He must have found her little story pretty funny, since he laughed about it until they got in the car. But now, as the two of them descended on the Joker's wolf pack, Harley could feel her confidence waning. They were a boisterous bunch of guys, who only grew to a fever pitch once they had placed eyes on the Joker. She forced herself to swallow the lump of anxiety growing in her throat. Nearly all the doctors at Arkham had been male, and she never let them intimidate her. That being said, she'd never had to deal with about ten doctors at once...

She recognized a couple other faces, the two men who'd come in with Bosco the first time Harley had come to Gambol's bar. The rest of them were strangers to her, and some of them were simply...strange. Each and every single one of them looked like someone you would hate to meet in a dark alley. A couple had scars worn with pride on their faces. Another one was, Harley noticed, missing the tip of his index finger of his right hand. People casually referred to the man as '_Shooter_'.

However, it wasn't until people started placing eyes on Harley that things suddenly grew very quiet. A couple of men held pool cues, and stood around a table as she stepped to the side of the Joker. Their stares weren't malicious so much as flat. Once they'd all taken an eyeful, many of them - including Harley - looked to the Joker to provide something of an introduction.

The Joker was terrible at introductions.

A younger black kid from the back, leaning on his pool cue, called out to Harley, "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm sure you've all seen the news," the Joker croaked, but that wasn't enough to answer very many questions. "This is Harleyquinn. She'll be working with me... think of her as kind of a 'tactical attack unit'."

"What'cha trying to say?" one of them asked.

The Joker came back with a stern jab of his own, "Well Jacko, maybe if you could hit more than a couple of cans on the fence of your uncle Jim-Bob's farm, then_ you_ could be the tactical unit. But until you can do fifteen backflips in a row and shoot a man between the eyes at a hundred feet, then Harleyquinn's gonna have it over you every time."

A couple of the guys gave her an impressed look, but as with the Joker, many of them were the type to believe it when they saw it. Regardless, his introduction had given her the surge of confidence she needed to face this group of rough-and-tumbles.

"So what's the game?" a young man asked. He was considerably more put together than the rest of them; Harley might have even considered him attractive if he didn't have such a hard expression on his face. She recognized him as Marky, one of the Joker's most trusted thugs.

"The game..." he purred, provoking Harley to take her eyes off the crowd and place them back on the Boss, "is actually pretty simple. We're going to steal about three tons of TNT from the Caspian, Martin and Vititoe architectural, construction and demolition firm," he explained, resolute as he leaned against one of the pool tables, the rest of the men surrounding him.

She was confused. "Why only three?" she asked, a couple of heads turning to regard her as she did. "You said there was probably about six tons in the building. Why are we only stealing three?"

He pointed at her with a gloved finger. "Because I don't believe in being greedy. We're only stealing three because the remaining three are going to act as a diversion."

"A diversion?" someone else asked.

"That's right, boys – a diversion. We're not just getting in there to get things done. We're going to be rattling some cages while we're at it." This idea appeared to provoke some excitement from the group, as several of them smiled and nodded, buzzing amongst one another as they considered the implication.

Harley still wasn't catching on, so she stood with her arms crossed and listened as he continued. "I know the boys at the MCU are excited to see me again... and it's been a while since we've played a good game. We're going to be split up into two teams. Team one's with me. We'll act like we're removing the explosives from the foundation of the building. Team two's with Harleyquinn and Bosco, up on the top three levels of the building, removing the TNT from the payloads located there."

Now Harley understood. The MCU would deploy a ground team, and would immediately go after the Joker, being tipped off that he was removing the explosive from the basement of the Creemore Building. This would provide Harley and her team the time they needed to get the TNT out of the building without being noticed.

"That place has been hollowed out for months!" said a middle-aged man with a full head of black hair and a very husky voice. "How do you expect us to get this shit outta the building? Use the stairs?"

The rest of the guys erupted into laughter, but with her arms still crossed over her chest, Harley turned, improvising an idea to dismiss the man's bad attitude. "We could use a zip-line system. We'd need a relatively large truck...we could park it a few hundred meters away and zip-line the explosive into the back of the truck. The cops won't think to look that far away for it, and they certainly won't think to look up if they were tipped off that you were in the basement. We could even set up a decoy truck out front to distract them..."

There was a few seconds of silence, and at first, Harley wondered if she had said something stupid. After some thought, the Joker's expression appeared impressed, and he nodded his head. "Not just a pretty face after all, are ya?" he asked. Harley offered back a shy smile, her eyes dropping to the floor.

"That sounds like fun, doesn't it? Marky, you think you can get us another truck?" he asked.

Apprehensively, the young man ran his hand through his hair, pushing the unruly fringe away from his face. "Mmm... I dunno Bossman. The guy we got the other truck from wasn't too happy when we couldn't return it last time."

"You got thirty-six hours," the Joker told him with a boorish grin. "Get to work. The rest of you, I'm going to split up into the two teams. Remember. A few of you will play the sitting duck with me, and the rest of you will be up on the top floors removing the explosives with Harleyquinn."

As soon as the Joker had finished his sentence, there was this indescribable, bubbling sound that made Harley turn her head with a glare. There was a larger man with a bandana on his head, sucking his teeth in dissatisfaction with the Joker's plan. "And what makes you think we want to take orders from this little milkshake, huh?" he asked, taking a couple steps forward and dropping a heavy hand on the back of Harley's shoulder, giving her a tight squeeze with his gigantic palm. "She don't know a damn thing. She hardly seems like management material to me."

A couple of the men chuckled when the large man spoke, but Harley wasn't laughing. Most importantly, neither was the Joker.

From the time that large hand had landed on her shoulder, the Joker hadn't moved an inch. In fact his poise seemed to tighten, his gloved hands gripping the edge of the billiard table, the squeaking leather tightening around his calloused fingers. With that bulky hand still on her shoulder, Harley didn't take her eyes off him for a minute.

The Joker's most intimidating look was not the eerie smile or twisted laugh that one would have expected. Instead, Harley could see his tongue glide across his back molars in impatience. With his head tilted downward and his eyes pointed up to the brute of a man, the Joker must have known that such a glance gave him a haunting, wild-eyed look.

"Take your hand off her before I cut it off at the elbow and beat you with it," he said in a dark but crystal clear tone.

Immediately, he raised both hands up to shoulder level and took a few steps away from the girl. "You're going to take orders from her, because I say so. _She_ is an extension of _me_. If she tells you to do something, it's as important as if I was saying it," he told them all in the same tone.

None of them moved, with the exception of Bosco, who stood behind the bar with a knowing smile on his thin lips. After a few seconds, Harley adopted the same smile.

"That's it for now... Behind the warehouse at the corner of Ninth Street and Westwood Avenue tomorrow night at eleven o'clock," the Joker said. As soon as he had finished talking, several of the men picked up their coats and headed toward the door, while a few straggled behind to finish their pool game.

His dark eyes shot up to meet hers as he pushed himself off the edge of a pool table. "Well... that went well..." she said with a large, fake smile. Harley wasn't really expecting any respect from the temporary thugs the Joker called his crew, but she wasn't expecting to be harassed.

"All criminals are like that. They want to see that you're good before they believe that you're good. You don't put your money down on someone you don't even know," he explained and motioned her over to the bar where Bosco was waiting.

"You did," she teased him lightly.

Shooting back a glare, he shook his head, "No, I didn't." Sliding on to a bar stool, he watched the young man, feigning a grin. "Okay kid, tell me the news."

Harley slid into the seat next to him and cautiously watched the interaction between the two. Bosco's normally light expression melted when the Joker asked his question. "You want to know the news? You're a crazy motherfucka' who's going to get himself killed over a grudge and a couple tons of explosives."

"That's old news!" the Joker chirped and waved him off, but Bosco wasn't backing down that easily.

Shaking his head feverishly, he put a couple glasses down on the marble-top for them. "No Joker-man, not this time. Word on the street is that the Commissioner's office will personally see to plea-deals for anyone who's willing to hand your ass over to the cops."

"So why are you still here?" he asked, leaning over the bar to reach for a toothpick.

"I'm here warnin' your ass. As far as my line of work, I've got the only steady gig left in town and I plan on keeping it, a-thank you very much." Harley found it difficult not to chuckle at Bosco when he spoke to the Joker like this. She had only met him a few times, but what she knew of the man, she liked. He must have felt the same about her, since he flashed her back his own twisted smile when he caught her stifling a laugh.

"So...what is your suggestion?" the Joker asked, flourishing his hand toward the young man who lifted a bottle of cheap whiskey to read the label.

Pouring the amber liquid into the two glasses, he sighed. "I suggest you have a drink because it's cold outside, then you get your scrawny ass over to that building and find your own way out so you don't find yourself having to improvise. You're going to be a sitting duck in that foundation if I tip the cops off, like you want me to."

Harley shook her head violently from side to side. "Can someone tell me exactly why we're tipping off the cops? Seems like you're just borrowing trouble for yourself."

"We call the cops so that we can control them," Bosco said, just as the Joker was opening his mouth to speak. "If someone else calls them, they may be able to provide details that we would otherwise hide from them. See, if I call..." He used his hand to illustrate a telephone receiver. "...I can tell them exactly and only what I want them to know, which in this case, is that the Joker is stealing explosives from the _basement_ of the mark, and no where else."

"The 'mark' in this case, is the building" the Joker whispered as he leaned over to clarify.

"What I _neglect_ to tell them is where the truck is, and that you and the seven other guys on top of the building are the ones who are _actually_ stealing the explosives."

There was still something that befuddled Harley as Bosco's thin hand slid the drink over to her on a coaster. "But if the Joker is actually in the foundation of the building, he's putting himself at a huge risk." There was a sliver of concern in her voice, but she tried her best to remain strategic.

"Ah yeah, but if he ain't in the basement, and the bacon realized we lied to them, they're going to sweep the rest of the building, and then they're going to find you," Bosco wore a devilish smile on his face as he leaned his elbows against the bar.

"Drink up..." the Joker said, holding the small rocks glass between his thumb and middle finger and throwing the potent fluid down his throat. Then he slid out of his chair, buttoning up his frock as he moved toward the door.

"Why? Where are we going?" she asked before her own drink disappeared in a strikingly similar fashion.

"It's cold out, and we have to go for a walk."

She shot a cautionary glance back to Bosco, but he only smiled back. That straight-toothed grin of his did more to unnerve her than the Joker's did. It was a smile that, as she left the bar, left her wondering if there was any honor to be found among thieves.

* * *

Whenever the Joker walked anywhere, he moved through some of the sketchiest underbelly that Gotham had to offer. Harley's father had always warned her about alleyways, even in the cleaner parts of town. Less than three blocks away from Crime Alley, the Joker didn't hesitate as he turned corner after corner. For fear of what may have come up from behind, she followed very closely. The dankness of these places hardly resembled the empty, softly lit setting of the street they had been on moments ago, just outside of Gambol's bar. Now there was a distinct smell of urine, and Harley was sure she heard two cats fighting somewhere in the distance, and a baby crying from one of the apartments that backed onto the alley.

This was a hell of a place to try to raise children.

As the two made their way through the maze of back alleys that connected some of Gotham's major arteries, Harley spoke in hushed tones. "Do you even know where we are?" she asked, blinking at him innocently when he turned to shoot her a sarcastic glance.

"No, we're totally and completely lost. I'm looking for a gas station to ask for directions." Here he paused and pulled back his hand as if threatening to backhand her. "Of course I know where we are! Now shut your hole! This is a residential area, and we're close to the mark. I don't want anyone knowing I'm in the area. We'll put a hex on the whole damn thing."

Tight-lipped, Harley trotted after him across another, larger street, before making their way into yet another alley which opened up into an industrial area. Chain link fences surrounded messy lots filled with woodworking equipment. Once the area was a little more open and the Joker was pretty confident that no one was around, he spoke again. "Once the Creemore Building's gone, they'll pull apart the rest of this place and melt it down," he said, over the sound of their shoes crunching down the gravel driveway.

"Why?" she asked looking around in curiosity, and could almost feel the Joker rolling his eyes to her question.

"Haven't I taught you anything yet? If there's one thing in Gotham that's more important than money, it's real estate. The only thing that separates this area from downtown is the Finger River. North, sure, there's a few nice condos, but other than that..." He whistled through his teeth to denote the lack of anything substantial. "They clear out all this crap and they could extend downtown Gotham from Dixon Dock _aaaaall_ the way up to the North end of the Botanical Garden, hell maybe even up to the Sprang River," he hypothesized as he pushed past a broken chainlink fence.

Harley only scoffed and shook her head. "No way! They wouldn't build Downtown that close the Arkham Asylum..."

He just laughed. "That's what you think. And how long do you think it'll be until they move all the crazy to a location beyond the walls of the city, hmm?" he asked with a certain amount of disdain in his voice. "Now that old Jeremiah Arkham's gone, I'm sure the head of the foundation won't have a problem selling off the island and moving to wherever the Mayor will let him."

"I dunno..." Harley admitted as she slipped past the fence, careful not to catch her jacket. "I haven't really heard anything about him."

Once she fell in step next to the Joker, she found him looking up at the building, which was still about three hundred or so feet away. "Me neither," he quipped. "He seems like a strange guy."

Locked in thought for a moment, her eyes scanned over the sight of the place. She remembered the Creemore building fairly well. She'd been here a couple times – Her father's defense attorney had an office here at one point. It had been a beautiful old place, but now it was hollowed out like an empty lobster shell, little pieces of steel tubing and copper wire jutted out violently from the walls that they had dwelt in for what Harley was sure must have been almost a century. But before the two started moving, she thought of another point of interest that piqued her curiosity.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"I don't know, _can_ you?" he teased in a flat voice, his eyes still scanning the ruined edifice.

"May I?" she corrected herself in a deliberate, almost frustrated way.

"No," he chirped, taking another cautious few steps.

Harley's eyes half-lidded in disappointment as she carefully made her way after him over the uneven ground. "No, I'm serious. I want to know why you know so much about this stuff."

"About what?"

With her arms out to either side for balance, Harley kept her eyes on her feet and didn't notice he was so close until she came right up behind him. When he whirled around, the hem of his frock brushed against her pant leg, and she had to tilt her head back to look at him. "I want to know how you seem to know...well, _everything,_ about real estate and building schematics."

He looked at her with a raised eyebrow for a moment, but then turned around and continued walking toward the building. "When you blow up as much shit as I do, you start getting the feeling that you're doing people more favors then they might think."

As they came closer and closer to the west side of the building, the Joker pressed his back against the wall of a nearby maintenance structure, not more than a hundred and fifty feet away. Pressing a finger to his lips to silence her, he pointed off in the direction of the building. Immediately Harley noticed the surveillance team in a truck. It looked to be an armored vehicle, and Harley could see the exasperation in his face when she looked at him again. Adhering to his request for silence, she put her hands on his shoulder and stood on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear. "C'mon, let's just go around to the east side of the building and sneak in that way," she insisted, smiling at him. "You knew they were going to be here..."

They turned back the way they'd come. At a distance, they made their way around the parameter of the building and to the opposite side, where the coast was more than clear - it was pitch black. The two wove through a neglected green patch, rife with weeds and soft earth that Harley's shoes would spike into once every couple feet. They came to stop at a chain link fence lined at the top with barbed wire, an abandoned parking lot just beyond it.

"Shit..." he muttered to himself and with no more than a few seconds of hesitation, began sifting through his pockets for something tough enough to cut through the chainlink.

"Weren't you ever a boy scout?" Harley asked, lifting the two fingers on her left hand. "You know, be prepared?"

This time he was the one who was a little lack luster. Giving the building a determined stare, she reached her hands up and immediately began unfastening the buttons of her tuxedo jacket.

While still reaching into the inside breast pocket of his vest, he stopped, watching her for some time before finally asking, "What do you think you're doing?"

"You think they're not going to check the fence for any points of entry?" she laughed, "They're going to see someone's snuck in and then they're going to have this place swarming with personnel tomorrow night. So, I'll throw my coat over the barbed wire," Harley explained, and just as she was about the toss her jacket a good ten feet to cover the wire, he held his arm to stop her.

"Don't do that...here." He paused and removed his own coat, which was significantly larger. "My coat gets a little cut up, it just adds to the appeal, you know?" And while the Joker was relatively nonchalant about his gesture, Harley only smiled to herself, nodding politely and twisting her lips into a stifled grin.

He quickly took a jab at her to balance the atmosphere. "Can you climb a fence in those things?" he said, asking about her shoes as he heaved his weighted jacket up to covered the sharply barbed wire.

She hadn't really thought about it, and pouted at the idea. They were her favorite pair. Thinking about it for a couple seconds, she shrugged her shoulder, the same with the same corkscrew smile. "Mmm...they'll probably get scratched up, but that just adds to the appeal, you know?" she asked, and reaching up to slide her fingers between the diamond shaped links and pulling herself up one step at a time. "How about you? How's your upper body strength?"

Scoffing at her, he lifted himself up onto the fence in much the same way she did. The gentle jingling of the fence could be heard, but it was certainly nothing that would have reached to the other end of the building where the sleepy security force had been waiting. Carefully the two of them threw one leg at a time over the fence, the Joker lifting his coat from the wire once he'd made it over.

Cautiously, they made their way across the parking lot and into an opening that had once housed a steel plated door. Inside, the place was left to ruin. Random cables sprang out from the walls like arms reaching out through a fence of twisted wire and copper tubing. There were pieces of drywall and garbage strewn about irregularly, and in one room there had even been an abandoned computer.

Turning back, Harley could see the Joker carefully inspecting the room they had just walked through. "It's sad huh?" she asked him, her hand sliding down a large iron 'I' beam. "Nothing lasts forever..."

Clearly he'd thought and even considered what she said, but his only response was to point toward a doorway leading to a set of stairs. "You in the mood for some cardio?"

Before long, the two were moving down into the foundation on a set of shaky maintenance stairs, a small flashlight the Joker had hidden away in a pocket guiding their way. The building had been created before the advent of underground parking, and most of the space in the high-ceiling basement was taken up by water boilers, heaters and other maintenance equipment that had once been there, having been removed due to disuse.

In the center of the room, was exactly what they had been looking for, and it was unlike anything that Harley had seen before. Securely tied together were boxes upon boxes, of perfectly square parcels wrapped in manilla paper, layered on wooden skids like puzzle pieces. They appeared rather ambiguous, save for the fact that they were all wired together. There was three platforms of them, each stacked about three feet high.

"They're not done yet... Tomorrow they'll secure all this explosive to the weight bearing support columns, and wire them out to a safe distance," he explained to her, taking the flashlight from off the explosives and glancing around the remainder of the empty basement.

Harley found the place a little spooky, and in the light that bounced around the room, she pictured the Joker's sights settling on some monster in the dark. Without the tiny flashlight the place would have been pitch black, but that didn't seem to worry the Joker as he moved around the edges of the foundation, his light pointing up toward the ceiling.

"What are you looking for?" she asked, taking a couple steps toward him to get a closer look for himself.

The Joker had to turn the flashlight to see exactly where she was. Shielding her eyes with her hand, she squinted in the light. "Looking for any points of entry, any tubing or piping, something that will make the concrete weak enough for me to break through."

"I don't like the fact that you're luring them down into the basement..." she countered, expressing her distaste for the idea as he scoffed and turned the flashlight to the wall once more. "You said you'd let them think that they had cornered you, but if you lead the cops into a place like this, they _will_ corner you."

"Oh ye of such little faith," he chided her with a wry smile.

She sighed heavily, pressing her fingertips into her now throbbing skull. "I'm not joking..."

And when she thought the Joker would turn, and say something reassuring to stop her worrying, he gnashed and growled, snapping at her like some wild beast. "Don't start getting all sentimental on me, alright?" he asked, and it was enough of a shock to force Harley back into the darkness. "Trust me, I've done this a thousand times..."

"And you've been caught once before." Harley's response would have just further inflamed the Joker if she hadn't explained herself. "They catch you this time, and they're not going to throw you in a nice cushy cell in Arkham. They'll send you to Blackgate and throw you on death row." He was quiet for a moment, then, and appeared to be listening. "Now, I know you'll have a couple guys down here with you, but there needs to be a way that I can help you, otherwise I'm gonna feel like you're just trying to protect me by leaving me on the roof."

He turned to her, mouth agape, but instead of the dead serious expression he was expecting to see, she wore a thin, cheeky smile. "And, you wouldn't want me to get impression, would you?"

"Oh... I've got plans for you," he answered back with a grin of his own. "Don't you worry about that."

* * *

Twenty-four flights of stairs later, Harley heaved herself against the roof access door with a heavy huff. She was in pretty good shape, but even that was a bit of a workout. Not far behind, a considerably more breathless Joker brought up the rear, leaning heavily upon the door frame when he emerged. Clearly only paying attention to the burning sensation in his legs, he leaned over with tightly closed eyes to catch his breath.

Harley, on the other hand, was focused on something else entirely. No more than a few miles away, Gotham's downtown skyline ripped across the horizon like a fissure in the earth. The bright white and amber lights of the city, radiated into the sky above it, turning the blackness of the night into the indigo of breaking twilight.

She had an appreciation for the city the way a mountaineer might appreciate a vertical cliff, or the way a ship's captain might value the challenge of a rocky sea. Now more than ever, the city was a beautiful place, but not only because of the view it offered. It was her reign, her territory. Standing here, she felt like she could hold it all in the palm of her hand.

"Whoa..." the Joker's voice croaked from behind her, the sound of his feet crunching along the rooftop gravel.

She was silent for a moment longer, the only sound she could hear the sound of their coats fluttering in the early morning breeze. "Seems a shame that this view will be destroyed forever, doesn't it?" she asked in a hollow kind of voice, her eyes ominously reflecting the silver light of city.

The Joker snorted at the thought. "You want a view? I could take you to some pretty wild heights if you wanted me to."

With a tiny, sad smile, she turned over her shoulder to regard him before her eyes flashed back to the scene in front of her. "Oh, yeah?"

Her question distracted him for a moment as she carefully looked over the edge of the building and to the security van below. Raising a brow, he grinned when she looked back at him. "You afraid of heights?"

Harley's voice came out from behind him dark, and smooth, as if she was doing her very best job to convince him. "What if I told you I wasn't afraid of anything?"

"I wouldn't believe you," he said suddenly, looking back to her somewhat smug expression. "Everyone's afraid of something."

"How very human of you..." Taking a couple steps toward him, she made a point to leave the tip of her toe just hanging over the edge. "So, you'd admit that there's something that scares you?"

Now he was the one with the smug expression as he crossed his arms over his chest. "I never said I'd admit it..."

Harley had to laugh at that, beaming her large smile out across the city like a search light. "I'm not really afraid of heights, more afraid of the _falling_ from said heights," she admitted, her eyes falling down to the security van below. "Why? Plan on throwing me off the side of the building?"

Without another seconds of hesitation, the Joker swept his arm into her, as if to push her off, but instead, held her steadily by the arm. He couldn't help but laugh maniacally as she caught her breath, her horrified expression looking up at him as he pulled her a few steps back from the edge.

She looked as if she might attack him, but he waved a hand disarmingly as his laughter quieted. "Well... something like that, but not quite. But, might actually require you to be fearless."

"If you want you want fearless..." She began powering that spotlight smile on his face. "Then all you have to do is ask."


	48. Chapter 48: Heat

[Note from the Author: Hey guys! I'm really sorry about the delay on this chapter. I know I had committed to posting every week, but right now I'm going to have to put two week stints in between chapters. My goal is to have this story completed by the time the Dark Knight Rises hits theaters next year. Again, I'm very sorry for the delay. I will be posting again soon. Until then, please enjoy Chapter 48! Thanks again for all your great support.]

That the offices at Gotham City's Major Crime Unit were nearly empty so late at night was not an odd occurrence. There was no such thing as a desk job in the MCU. Everyone was out taking cases, patrolling the streets, keeping Gotham as safe as they could – though how effective they were now was anyone's guess. Every single officer who walked through those halls knew that they were just avoiding the inevitable...riding out the calm before the storm, so to speak. With the Joker out of Arkham, it was only a matter of time before something happened. It had been just over three weeks, and all of them had braced themselves.

Something was coming. Something very, very big was coming.

For Joe Callaghan, late night at the MCU had become his haven. It was quiet, dark, and the perfect place to bury his nose in an evidence file in an attempt to draw lines between the events of the last month. It had been over a week since he had promised Jim Gordon results, and so far, he wasn't having a lot of luck.

From the very start this case had been completely disjointed. Developing cases against the Joker and Dr. Harleen Quinzel wasn't the hard part – the hard part was proving that either of them would be fit to face the prosecution. It was easy for the rest of the world to point a finger at the Joker for the young woman's descent into hell, but Joe didn't think it was quite so simple. The question that rang repeatedly in his mind was how had this intelligent doctor, with the world as her oyster, given everything up for a madman? Insanity was one way to look at it – in fact it was the preferred way... but it was a pill he just couldn't swallow.

As Joe sat on one of the old oak desks that adorned the investigations department of the MCU, the ringing in his mind transformed into an actual, physical ringing. For a moment, Joe thought it might have been a figment of his imagination. Slowly, his eyes turned up from where they'd been resting on the convoluted findings of the case file, to the telephone as it all but rattled on its hook.

Confident that someone else would pick it up, he tried his best to ignore the persistent chiming and turn back to his work. But the phone kept ringing, and ringing, and ringing, until...

"Detective Joesph Callaghan," he answered the phone abruptly.

On the other end of the line there was a calm, cool voice. It was dark, melodic, but distorted, as though the call was coming from a cellular phone with a particularly poor reception. "May I speak to Jim Gordon, please?" the man asked politely, but Joe immediately got the impression that there was very little truth to his kindness.

"Uh..." Joe stumbled, looking for a piece of notepaper to take some notes. "No, I'm afraid he's not in the MCU office at the moment. Can I take a message?" he asked, brows furrowed, waiting to see if this call turned out to be anything besides creepy.

Suddenly he found himself wishing that the place hadn't been so dead quiet.

"Suuure," the voice said with a tint of thoughtfulness that made Joe dread what was coming next. "Tell Commissioner Gordon that the Joker is at the Old Creemore building in East Gotham, stealing explosives from the foundation, and that if he doesn't want to miss the party, than he might want to hurry."

"Who is this?" Joe asked, leaning over the desk with a determinant look on his face.

The only answer he received was the dial tone.

For a minute, Joe felt like a rookie again, and his hands fluttered across the table, unsure of what it was that he should immediately do. Quickly, he took a deep breath, and with the eraser of his pencil, he keyed in the number to Jim's cellphone number that he'd contributed to memory. It rang once, and again, and then suddenly there was a tired voice on the other end of the line.

"Hello...?" Jim asked groggily.

"Commissioner, someone just called in with a very urgent message for you..."

* * *

"You ready?" the Joker asked, as the two of them stood in the darkness on top of the building. They'd been here less than twenty-four hours before, and in that time, Harley had been briefed from head to toe on exactly what it was that she would be doing.

In actuality, she wasn't really ready, but she swallowed the knot in her throat and nodded, "As ready as I'm ever going to be, I suppose." She was lying, but the Joker knew that, and had everyone else heard it, they might have laughed; she half-expected him to laugh as well.

He didn't.

"You regretting this choice you made?" he asked in a gritty tone, enough for Harley to turn and glare.

"No!" she struck back at him, before looking down over the edge of the building. "I'm not regretting anything."

Behind her in his full regalia, she could hear him pace furiously through the gravel on the rooftop. By the time the two of them had arrived, the gates had been cut through, and the security personnel had already been killed. Their bodies had been pulled off into the long grass around the building, and their truck had been rigged with three barrels of gasoline, set to go with the strike of a match. Harley had seen the bloodstains on the ground from where they had been shot. She'd never been queasy at the sight of blood, and wasn't about to start. She'd seen the Joker's impressed expression as they two of them had strode past, and into the building. Maybe she was capable of dealing with the drama of such an escapade; she wasn't quite sure herself, but it was clear the Joker was having his reservations.

"You're not ready for this..." he growled, displeased by his revelation.

"You're not taking me out," she proclaimed, showing no signs of backing down, even when the Joker extended his squinted, dark-eyed, glare in her direction.

"What makes you so sure about that?" he asked, with a stillness in his voice which normally would have just done more to shake her, but this time, accomplished nothing.

"I can't be a hundred percent sure where the bullets will end up, or how successful I'll be, but that doesn't make me any less confident in my ability," she chirped, and although the affirmation might have done a little something to lower the fear, he still didn't seem all that convinced.

Crossing the arms of his dusty, violet peacoat over one another, he leaned back on his heels, leaning forward to question her again. "So are you ready or not? You got an axe to grind or something?"

"Just because I'm ready for this, doesn't make the fear of failure go away. I'm not looking to grind an axe, I'm looking to prove myself." Her heated glance penetrated him as she watched the cynical, doubting gaze that shot from his eyes like tiny lightning bolts. "The night I broke you out of Arkham, I was angry. I need to prove to you that I'm not just a flash in the pan, and I need to prove to myself that I'm capable of running along side you."

The Joker's face softened as Harley pulled the leather headdress out from under her arm, where she'd been holding it against her body. Using her free hand to twirl her long blonde hair into a loose french roll behind her head, she slipped the fitted jester's headgear on, making sure to tuck the black neck line into her white latex collar.

Turning to glance back at him, her dark, cat-eyed shaped makeup making the ultramarine iris pop, even in the night's blackness. She gave him a playful smirk. "...and doesn't this look like the kind of person you'd want to have with you?"

He tried his best to maintain a grimacing, unimpressed expression, but his scowl was no match for the excitement clearly drawn on her face. "Besides, what happens if I blow everyone's socks off and do a great job, hmm?" she asked. "Do I get a present?"

"Sure, you get the gift of life... because I won't kill you."

The two looked at each other for a moment before they both broke out into bemused laughter. "You keep joking around like that, sooner or later I'm going to start believing that maybe you'd never have the guts to do me in."

"Not today..." he said, eyes half-lidded as he dug some of the dirt out from under his fingernails.

She smiled and looked out over the view of Gotham that she so appreciated. "Well I'll make sure not to test you."

Suddenly the sound of footsteps could be heard coming up the stairs to the roof, and the two of them turned at the ready for whoever it was that should emerge. Harley was relieved to see Bosco at the top of the stairs a few seconds later, huffing and puffing from his frantic climb. "I just got off the horn with the fuzz," he exclaimed to the Joker before glancing over at Harley. "They should be on their way any minute."

Nodding, the Joker waved him off. "Alright, it's go time. Tell the Bear and Marky to meet me down in the basement, and I'll be down there in a few."

"You got it Bossman," he said in an affirmative before looking back to Harley once more. "Hol' tight, OK Chicken? I'ma be back up in a few minutes to set you up with your harness, a'ight?"

Harley smiled at his sweetly concerned street talk. Nodding an affirmative of her own, she watched him trot back down the stairs before looking back over at the Joker. "You better get going," she said to him, and he turned to give her a hard but oddly distressed glance. Sharply, she inhaled through her nose, couching down to open a case by her feet.

She spoke casually as she threw open the lid, clipping a loaded magazine into an AK-47, a skill the Joker had taught her not more than twelve hours before. "Just, be careful, would ya? I know you're generally not that concerned for your welfare, but I am. I'd like it if we could both end up going back in one piece," she explained, avoiding eye-contact with him as she clipped a neck-strap to the intimidating weapon, carefully sliding it over her headgear and around her right arm and shoulder.

"That's not usually the name of the game..." he told her flatly before the two of them were distracted by the sound of a distant police sirens, the flashing of multiple blue and red lights flickering against the sides of buildings.

Smiling, she waved him off. "Alright, well... I'll forgive you if you come back a little banged up."

Looking out over the city to gauge the sirens' distance, she heard the Joker's footsteps come forward. He took a firm hold of her arm.

Gasping as she took a couple steps back from the edge, that small fear in her heart expanding, wondering if the Joker might have been threatening to throw her off again, but instead he loomed over her, his presence made her feel as though she was tiny enough to scoop up in his jacket.

She'd brought her arm up, and glared at him in curiosity, as he continued to hang on. "What now? You don't have the time to fool around right now. Tell you what, you can throw me off the building if I do a shitty job, ok? But until then..."

"Harley?" he interrupted, stopping her sentence dead in its tracks.

She blinked in confusion a couple times, her large eyes staring up at him, searching his face. "Yeah?"

"Shut up..." he told her flatly, and she had every intention on protesting until his grip on her wrist tightened, and almost swiftly, as if he'd done it a half a million times before, pulled her in.

At once, every inch of protest left her body, and just like the time the two of them had been caught in her iridescent fishbowl of an apartment, the police sirens seemed to play the best mood music.

He kissed her, and though he hadn't rushed, it had ended much sooner than Harley would have hoped. In fact, the Joker must have appreciated the look of dull surprise it left on her face; his expression was smug as he turned and headed for the stairs.

"What was that for, luck?" she asked, a shy grin spreading over her face as she turned down to look at her shoes.

"Something like that..." he said, nonchalantly waving as he turned down the stairs.

* * *

Darkness cloaked the landscape as Jim all but flew through the streets of South Gotham. His tie had been hastily knotted round his pulsing neck, as his speeding car veered around one corner, and than another. Naively, he'd wished this day would never come, but by instinct alone, he knew it would only be a matter of time before the Joker brought his new 'Harley' out of the garage.

If he had been looking to simplify the Joker, he might have called him a showman. Everything he did seemed in effort to draw attention to himself. It was an idea that frightened a man like Jim, who usually tried to keep himself out of the limelight, and found himself incredibly uncomfortable once he found himself there. The Joker found so much pleasure in this high-powered media attention that he reminded Jim very much of a cat who liked to writhe and stretch in the sun. It was almost as if the actual crime itself was secondary to its entertainment value.

It didn't matter much if he was successful, so long as he had a good time.

Such mentality almost made Jim feel as though he was playing right into the Joker's hand. The suspicious call earlier in the evening had obviously been from one of his thugs, and anyone could see that they were just a bunch of pigs being led to the slaughter - but what could he do, let the Joker run Gotham like it was his own tailor-made playground?

The lunatic was doing a great job at keeping Jim's confidence at an all-time low. In the past, he'd let Jim believe they had captured him, only to outsmart the GCPD yet again. it seemed like every time they got the leg up on him, the Joker would pull the floor out from underneath their feet and send them tumbling back down to square one all over again. Even now there was a sense of stand-still futility in the air as Jim rushed forward to what could have been his doom.

It wasn't until he began closing in on the sirens that he felt the inclination to reach for the red Blackberry in his trench coat pocket.

Jim's voice was shrill as he left a voicemail after the introduced beep. "I hope you don't have any other plans tonight, because the Joker just announced that he'll be stealing three tons worth of explosives from the Creemore building in North West Gotham. Don't call me back," he said before tossing the phone across the dash, mounting the curb and driving through the already ripped chain link fence.

He'd just barely thrown the car into park before he tore off through the parking lot, gun in hand. Other police officers stood, guns drawn behind the armored plating of their squad car doors. Heavily armored SWAT team members were already securing a perimeter around the building. Now that the Commissioner had arrived, all authority passed to him, and all the senior lieutenants acknowledged him as he stepped away from the still open door of his car and toward the back of the armored SWAT vehicle.

"Sir, we've got twenty men forming a perimeter, and fifteen men waiting to go in on your signal," said the gruff voice of the masked SWAT commander.

Jim couldn't see his face, but that again, he really wasn't paying very much attention. He'd grabbed a bullet-proof vest from the back of the van and was busy pulling it over his head. "Have you had any contact?"

"No sir, the only thing we've got so far is a white unmarked van on the north side of the building. It doesn't appear to have been tampered with, but so far no contact has been made with the Joker of any of his henchmen," he explained to the commissioner.

Jim's heart dropped. "So what you're telling me is that Joker could be leading us on a wild goose chase, and that we have no real proof that anyone from his team is even here?" he asked in frustration, but watched as the suited man shook his head.

"No sir, we're pretty sure he's here. The two paid guards from the construction company were found dead, and our acoustic measurement devices are picking up sounds from the foundation." The man lifted his visor, seemingly confused by the commissioner's actions as the older man checked the rounds in his magazine before sliding the clip into the butt of his handgun. "Sir, I advise that you retain a strictly administrative role on this mission. There's a large amount of high-explosives down there."

"You obviously don't know the Joker very well if you think he's got the stones to blow himself up," Jim chirped, sliding his holster to the small of his back before clipping in his gun. "He loves himself far too much to do that," Lifting himself up into the back of the SWAT van, he casually selected an assault rifle from off the wall, throwing the strap over his shoulder. "Has there been any sign of the girl?"

The man shook his head. "No Commissioner, no sign of her yet."

Jim sighed; secretly, he'd been hoping somebody had spotted her. Somewhere deep in Jim's heart, he'd wondered if the girl was still even alive at this point, but since the video had cleared up any speculation, he'd been hoping that she'd make her presence known. "Keep an eye out for her. The Joker could be planning anything."

"Yes sir," he said with a bit of hesitation in his voice before stepping up into the van himself. "If you insist on going in, at least let me set you up with a helmet."

* * *

Jim felt submerged when he took those few first steps into the darkness of the building. It enveloped him the way one might disappear beneath the waves; first he faded from sight, and then he was gone - they all were. Carefully, Jim skulked along the front corridor behind a few of the other team members. Usually they'd be carrying flare charges, or something of the like to distract their target as they swept in. This time was a little different. A flash might set off an explosives that might still be in the basement, and surprising the Joker usually ended up being pointless.

He always knew they were coming.

With only one entrance into and out of the basement, the men moved slowly, guns out in front of them as they quickly made their way toward the stairs. Tactically, Jim realized how much of a nightmare this place was, and it was easy to see why the Joker might have been chomping at the bit to get into a place like this. The tight corners, the dark atmosphere, the dank scent that hung in the air...all of it just screamed his name, and reminded Jim so much of the last building he'd been in. Secretly he hoped that, just like last time, capture was eminent.

As the team silently shuffled to the entrance to the basement, he watched as the team leader held up his hand to initiate a countdown. He knew the drill... in the next few seconds the entire team would soar down the stairs in an attempt to catch the Joker and his gang of miscreants off guard. One by one, the leader pulled his fingers in, and once he'd made a fist, all fifteen of them trampled down the stairs in just a few seconds flat, forming a semi-perimeter around the Joker as the lights from their scopes trained on him immediately.

Jim was confused. The skids packed full of explosives appeared untouched, as the Joker stood before them. In fact, it very much looked like he had been standing in the dark waiting for them to arrive. A few flashlights swept vaguely over the rest of the room, and the absence of anyone else terrified Jim.

Why was he waiting in a basement, by himself, with very little probability of escape? The only reasonable explanation was that they had been lured, but for what reason, Jim wasn't sure.

With his visor down, it was difficult to see anything besides the violet-cloaked psychopath who stood square in the center of the room. His head turned up slowly, eyes squinted in the harsh light of their scopes. Beyond that he stood perfectly still and drew in a deep breath through his nose. "Ah... Com_miss_ioner Gordon. I wouldn't ever say you didn't have guts. You're always the first to trudge headlong into danger. I can always smell a liar... even the ones who try to hide the stench."

From behind his darkened visor, Jim's expression was purely shocked. How could he have possibly known that he had been among them without hearing so much as his voice?

"Get on the floor, scumbag!" one of the men had hollered to him, gesturing toward the dusty ground with the barrel of his gun. The Joker only gave the man an amused glance before turning his attention squarely back to Jim.

Lifting his visor, Jim spoke in his most commanding tone, though he knew it would do nothing to intimidate him. "Where's the girl?"

"The girl?" he asked, feigning offense. "And here I was thinking you'd thrown this little party all for me."

"I'm not playing around with you, Joker!" he commanded, pressing the stock into his shoulder to steady the aim of his rifle. "Where's the girl? Where's Harley?"

"She's _fiiine_... actually, she's better than I expected." Here he sucked his teeth and squinted his eyes as he shook his head, "But if I were you, I'd be more worried about those missing explosives than dear Dr. Quinzel."

The light on Jim's scope quickly scanned to the left and the right of the Joker where both skids remained untouched, wrapped and arranged neatly. "The explosives are right there."

The Joker turned to assess the skids, nodding an affirmative of Jim's observation. "Oh, yeah... well you're right, these one's aren't missing. I'm talking about the other ones." He paused, and his squinting gazed narrowed skeptically at Jim. "What? You don't think they would only place explosives in the basement, do ya?" he asked before bursting out into a fit of laughter.

Jim looked around the room, "Alert the rest of SWAT to sweep over the rest of the building, they're stealing explosives from the upper levels!" he hollered, and then came an ominous sound. It reminding Jim of a sound when a magazine clips into place, except this one was larger, hollow.

Lights bounced about the room as Jim called out his orders, and although their scopes still trained themselves on the Joker, he swore there had been something else.

"How long is it, Commissioner?" the Joker asked with a sinister smile, forcing Jim to keep his eyes on the madman, although he wanted very much to scan through the rest of the room. "How long is it until that whole house of cards you've built up for yourself comes crashing down around you, _hmm_?" he asked with such screaming confidence that Jim nearly made himself sick.

He wanted to book him right there...not for what he had done to all those people, to Gotham; not for justice, or any sense of morality – Jim wanted to take him down for everything he thought he knew about him, for everything he'd done to Harley... and if it hadn't been for those self centered reasons, Jim might have had the SWAT team rush him.

His hesitation was always his downfall.

Someone's scope, not his, scanned room behind the Joker once more, just as there had been a very ominous click. From behind a small cement partition where some ancient appliance might have been tucked, there was a young man seated on the floor with his legs spread -

- and a rocket launcher mounted on his shoulder.

"Dive, dive, dive!" their team lead yelled out to his crew, and to the left and right of Jim everyone scattered to avoid the blast. There was a deafening bang and within milliseconds, Jim could feel the cold air from outside rush into the dank basement. Cement dust settled everywhere, and faintly he could hear orders being shouted.

There was a distinct sound of scampering feet, and Jim had lifted his head in just enough time to the the Joker lift himself up out of the foundation and through a ten-foot-wide hole he'd blown through the side of the building.

Jim felt some relief as he watched the Joker run through the hole. He knew that the Joker wouldn't be able to make it more than a couple steps without being tagged by the SWAT team out there; even now as he tried to recollect himself, other team members who had been inside with him would be moving to emerge through the gaping hole the Joker had left behind him.

Then, gunfire. The sound of bullets rained down on the black top, but instead of stability, it sounded very much like more panic had spread throughout the squad. Everything seemed to happen so fast, and before he knew it, Jim was being held down by a SWAT member who had returned back into the basement only seconds after lifting himself out from the hole.

"What is it? What is it?" Jim asked, having to yell at the top of his lungs over the sound of gunfire.

"It's Harleyquinn, sir!" the man on top of him hollered back. "She's covering the Joker from the roof!"


	49. Chapter 49: Cowboy

Bullets rattled out of the AK-47 like a flock of bats exploding from a cave. They rained down on the pavement below, and Harley could see the clouds of dust that erupted from the peppered pavement.

Maintaining the bullets' trajectory had been a little harder than she had expected - she'd come a little too close to hitting the Joker and his accomplices a couple of times. But the spectacle had done just what the Joker had hoped: it provided him adequate cover while taking SWAT attention off of him and training it on the roof. Truth was, Harley knew that this part of her adventure would be short-lived, so she gripped the gun the way one might wring out a damp rag, trying to squeeze all the fun she could out of it .

There was a reason they'd set her up with the AK instead of a sniper rifle. After the Joker left, Bosco had clipped her into a harness that allowed her to lean off the edges of the building, and it helped her clear a path from the Joker to where the fully loaded truck had been waiting all this time, a few hundred meters away. But instead of precision shooting, there was a hailstorm of bullets that rained down on the officers below. People scattered in all directions, and she knew that the Joker must have been loving every second of the chaos she was creating.

It gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, too.

Harley laughed in amusement as she walked around the rooftop's edges, SWAT doing their best to storm inside the building once again. She knew that any minute now, a team of them would burst up to the roof in an attempt to take her out.

No worries - she was beginning to realize that this was all just a part of the plan.

"While you're up here, stay on the roof, you understand?" Bosco had asked her, as he clipped a carabiner from her back and into a nylon tether that would keep her secure on the roof. "A few of them are going to get up here pretty fast. When they do, take a few shots at them, and then jerk the rope twice, and hard."

Bosco had explained that pulling on the rope twice would free up some slack, and allow her to swing from the roof, down into the twenty-fourth floor. From the inside of his old windbreaker he'd pulled a closed midsized folding knife and held it out for her to take. "Once you're there cut the tether, run to the zip line we left on the top floor and get your ass into the truck."

As she slipped the knife into a small pocket along the red leather seam of her jumpsuit, Bosco held out a small strange switch in the palm of his hand. "Here, take this too..." Harley had immediately noticed the obvious red button on this small detonator switch. "When you're ready to jump from the zip line, press the button."

"Why?" she'd asked in relative confusion, wondering what, if anything, they planned on blowing up.

"Distraction."

The idea appealed to Harley's thirst for adventure. Moving along the very edge of the building made her heart beat in sync with the rattling of the automatic weapon that was slung over her shoulder. The Joker, kept safe behind her curtain of bullets, had already quickly made his way to the chain link fence with the rocket launcher wielding 'Bear' and Marky, firing back with a shotgun.

Although the thrill was running high, so was the stress – Harley had to keep an eye on the door as well. With all the clamor there would be no way for her to hear the sound of pounding footsteps rushing up the stairs, and so every few seconds, her eyes flashed back to the door in attempt to protect herself without remaining too preoccupied with the Joker.

Before he had left, Bosco put a worried hand on her shoulder and gave her a stern glance. "Listen, the Joker's gonna have Marky and the Bear with him... so if anything goes wrong, and they get up here faster than you expected, than you need to get yourself out of here."

"Than what's the point in having me up here in the first place?" she'd asked.

Bosco just smiled and chided her by sucking on his teeth in feigned exasperation. "C'mon... you know the Joker wants you up here. But he also wants you back alive. Don't forget to watch your own ass while you're watching his."

That was exactly what she did. Beneath the leather, she was sweating as watched the Joker rush through the entrance they had torn in the chain link fence. While the SWAT team lumbered behind, several muscular German Shepherds raced toward the gate, gnashing and barking so loudly that even Harley could hear them.

"Shit..." she muttered to herself and turned to give the rope a tug as she turned around. It wasn't a moment too soon. Just at that second, three heavily armored members of the SWAT team emerged from the roof entry.

"Stop right there!" one of them screamed, but with a smug grin, Harley gave a second hard tug of the rope -

- and gasped loudly as she fell from the edge of the building, watching the expression of shock on their faces at what had to seem like a suicide jump.

Within a fraction of a second, the rope went tight, and the momentum of her fall catapulted her through a blown out window on the twenty-fourth floor. Wielding the knife in her free hand, Harley cut the tether before she'd even had the chance to hit the ground. Rolling on the gritty floor, she quickly recollected herself, pushing herself up to her feet.

"In here! In here!" she heard someone call out from behind her. Twisting herself, the gun rattled as the the AK-47 showered the oncoming SWAT with bullets. She took a few cautious steps back toward the zip line that fed right into the back of the transport truck. This system had worked well enough to transport the explosives from the building, but she wondered to herself how fast she would fly down this thing, and right over the Joker's head. She could see in the distance that the truck's engine was already starting up, its eerie orange headlights flashing as the engine started.

Quickly, gun still aimed at the door, she watched as a few more SWAT officers plunged into the room from the stairwell. Harley swept the gun across them, the gun leaving a line of bullet holes along the concrete wall, burying themselves into the kevlar armor of several team members. With her other hand she took hold of the carabiner dangling from her chest, clipping it onto the zip line before glancing down.

_It's never been the heights I'm afraid of... it's the fall._

Retrieving the red button detonator, Harley didn't have time to speculate about the outcome of an explosion before she pressed the trigger. There was a deafening _bang_, and a vibration under her feet. Three hundred feet below her, SWAT members and police officers alike scattered in all directions as the white van the Joker's henchmen had placed there exploded into a massive gasoline fire. Harley could feel the heat on her back as she took a mighty leap, pushing herself off the edge of the building and began moving at a tremendous speed toward the truck. The sound of rushing air filled her ears, and she watched as the Joker lifted himself up into the back of the truck trailer, along with the two other men who had been following him.

Firing off a few more shots, she laughed heartily as she flew over the faces of a few shocked police officers. Their gaping maws turned upward as they watched her fly over their heads, cackling like some wicked witch.

Even now, as she came in fast, she reflected back on the Joker's words about the longevity of adventure. _'...lots of planning, and only a few minutes of sheer, unadulterated joy'_ he'd said, but if a lead up of a few boring days resulted in a rush like this, Harley was more than happy to put in her required hours at the office.

The wind whipped her blond fringe away from her face, offering her a perfect view of the transport trailer's open doors, but also, peeling through the darkness and closing in on them quickly, Harley thought she saw some kind of a squad car, but it had been too dark... a SWAT van maybe? But, it couldn't have been. It was virtually invisible whenever it passed through the shadows, but when it passed a street light, or an orange flood lamp from one of the nearby warehouses, Harley could see its silhouette.

Finally coming into earshot, she witnessed as the Joker and his two men jumped into the back of the truck. "Joker!" she called out to him to attract his attention.

Once he'd turned to her, she pointed emphatically to the racing tank. The identity of the vehicle must have been clear to the him because he pounded loudly on the side of the trailer wall, singling the driver to step on the gas. Harley heard the truck grind itself into gear, attempting to take off as quickly as it could. No sooner had it begun to pull out of park had Harley sped into the back of the trailer, the cable snapping as the truck began to move, sending her onto the floor. She managed to land bent over, legs spaced far apart, fingertips steadily pressed into the floor of the trailer.

The back doors slammed shut, casting the room into a dull orange glow of internal light. "Don't move..." she heard the Joker growl from behind her.

Harley remained still. As the seconds ticked by, she wondered what had captured the Joker's attention so much that he'd requested she stay in the world's most unflattering position. "Alright, you can stand up now," he croaked, a coy smile cracking across his twisted mouth as his two other men grunted in suggestive laughter.

Unamused, Harley's gaze turned to the side as she felt the truck lurch into a left turn. "Good to know that you have a sense of humor – especially now," she said, but the Joker paid her little comeback no mind until he'd made his way over to the slide panel of the trailer, sliding open the door to the world outside.

"You think we'd be able to get through this without laughing at someone's expense?" he asked her.

"Yeah, but did it have to be mine?" she asked, watching him closely as she stepped toward the door.

The Joker appeared darkly focused on the vehicle in the distance, as it came closer and closer toward the transport truck. "Not for much longer. Here comes the next punchline..." he purred, and watched as the black tank-like thing came toward them at incredible speed.

"This sure looks familiar, doesn't it boss?" she'd heard Marky croak from a few feet behind them, loading shells into a magazine.

The Joker scoffed at the idea and shook his head, looping his hand into a leather sling as he released a giant sigh. "It's all been done before. This isn't going to be any fun."

"Is that him?" Harley asked flatly, her eyes shooting back up to the Joker. He turned back to her just long enough to nod. "So what now?"

Sighing, the Joker turned around to motion for Marky to pass him his gun. "Well, I know his type."

"He must know how much explosive we have on board," Harley yelled over the sounds that seemed to fill the air. The explosives they had packed into the truck remained at the very front of the trailer, tucked securely up against the wall, and while they seemed safe and sound, everything else around them was a hurricane - sirens blaring, engines revving, tires squealing, and the whole world around them appeared to be falling apart.

Harley watched for a moment as the black-tank came closer to the side of the trailer, the Joker burning through an entire magazine of his Glock. Not more than a hundred meters behind, a few squad cars along with a SWAT van followed quickly behind, attempting to catch up as they made their way toward the highway. Dealing with the cops would have been child's play for the Joker, though; they couldn't do anything that would cause the truck to crash, for fear of the high-powered explosives on board.

Batman was a different story.

Harley realized this would be the first time she'd be pitted directly against the man. Sure, she'd spoken to him the one time he'd come to warn her about the Joker's motives, and yeah... there was that little _altercation_ when he'd dragged the Joker across the lobby of Arkham Asylum. But beyond that, she knew only that he was a man who didn't operate on the same level the police did. He was trying to keep one step ahead of the Joker, while the Joker was trying to keep ahead of _everyone_. It must have been exhausting for him.

What kind of sidekick would she be if she couldn't remove him from the equation entirely?

In-between the Joker's bouts of firing at the Batman, Harley tapped him on the shoulder, which made made him jump. "Not now baby, Daddy's working..." he said through clenched teeth.

"If I handle this guy, can you get take care of the cops?" He hollered out over the sounds of the vehicles buzzing around them.

Before the Joker could say anything, the truck jerked suddenly to the right, causing Harley to reach out and hold onto him in order to maintain her balance. The expression on his face appeared concerned as he turned to speak to her. "What the hell are you talking about?" he asked, but she knew with the Batman quickly approaching that she would have no time to convince him.

Taking him by the collar to capture his full attention, he shot him a stern glare, "Just answer me! Can you get rid of the cops and get the truck outta here if I manage to get rid of the Bat?"

"Yeah... but how're you gonna do that?" Nonchalantly, he turned his back to her once more, the sound of massive tire treads vibrating through the earth as the Batman came ever closer.

Glancing down at the palms of her hands, her eyes scanned over the grip gloves that Bosco had provided her with earlier. Taking a deep breath, she watched as the massive dark tank pulled up alongside the truck trailer, its details clearer to her now. The top of the vehicle was wide, but would provide her with just the edging she'd need to support herself. She knew that if she did this now, there would be no coming back without triumph.

So, just as the Joker turned back to reach out for another gun, Harley had taken several steps backward, until the heels of her feet pressed against the opposite side of the truck. Flexing out her fingers in preparation, she rushed toward and then right past the Joker, who at this point regarded her with complete astonishment as she leapt like a cat from the relative safety of the truck trailer and onto the roof of the tumbler, her gloves easily adhering to the edge which hung over its bulletproof windows.

"_Harley_!" she heard the Joker call after her.

She didn't respond, too busy struggling to maintain her grip, the massive black vehicle swerving in response to her landing. Harley could only pay attention to the road in front of her as her feet scanned the back portion of the roof for anything to support some of her weight on. Finally her feet found the lip of the rear ventilation shafts, using them to steady herself as the Batman weaved left and right to free her grip.

The whole thing seemed so surreal, and at that very moment, it felt like everything that had happened in the last several months had led up to this moment. Where had that meek little librarian gone? _Oh her? Yeah, she's jumping from a speeding truck riding topside on Batman's personal limousine service. _

Just another day in the life.

"Take care of the cops and get outta here!" she hollered back to the Joker who still stood dumbstruck by such proactive behavior. "I'll find my way back!"

After she'd said it, it wasn't more than a few seconds before a defeated Batman must have realized that regardless of his maneuvering, the girl would not come loose. The tumbler geared forward, passed the truck, and sped along the highway toward the closest exit.

"Was that Harleyquinn riding on top of that thing?" came Bosco's crackling voice from over the handheld.

Snatching the walkie-talkie out of Marky's hands, the Joker held down the button to respond. "Next time I want to rip her fucking head off, remind me why I love that girl," he growled into the microphone – a response that his counterpart must have found particularly hilarious.

"Alright Jokerman, you got the SWAT team behind you. Have Bear throw open the back doors and take them out with the rocket launcher. After that you're going to have to close up and start moving the explosives all the way to the back if you want this to work."

* * *

Harley might have been having the time of her life surfing through the concrete waves of Gotham's inner city, had it not been for the fact that the rain had begun to fall. Droplets stung her eyes like a million bees and streaked her dark makeup out over her cheek bones like like dark shooting stars against an inverted white sky. But regardless of the weather, the tumbler was smooth against the wet pavement, and took corners particularly sharply, most likely in an attempt to throw her off.

Now that she was situated, Harley was able to maintain her grip without much hassle, but as the minutes dragged on, she couldn't help but open her stinging eyes to gather some kind of idea as to where he was taking her.

After living here long enough, the Gotham City landscape inevitably begins to bleed together. The skyscrapers of the downtown district all start to look the same, particularly when you're only getting brief glimpses of everything. Even so, she immediately recognized the smell of burning rubber and the vibration of tires as the passed up a small incline over cobblestone.

This was the bridge near her old apartment.

It just so happened to be only a few blocks away from the police station.

Alarmed at realizing his intention, she tried her best to antagonize him into confrontation. "C'mon you yellow-bellied worm!" she called out to him, gripping down hard with her right hand as she pounded on the top of the tumbler with the left. "Come out here you...you mammallian-winged monstrosity! Fight me like a man!"

She hollered in vain. This was not the kind of man who would be persuaded by words alone.

But then, there was a flash of epiphany that stung her - a thought of such genius that she didn't have much time to consider whether it was suicidal, or a revolutionary turn in their little game. Without giving the idea too much thought, she waited a few seconds until he slowed down into his next turn, and once he did, she took a deep breath, felt courage wash up her spine, and released the strength in her limbs, doing her best to push herself away from the tumbler as she rolled off the top. She landed hard on the pavement below, rolling side over side several times before she finally came to a stop.

Pain had squeezed the air from her lungs like a tube of hastily compressed toothpaste. Distantly, she heard the massive tires of the caped crusader's vehicle screech to a halt. For a second, she lay face down, feeling the rain pelting against her leather suit. It was softer now that speed had been removed from the equation, and slowly the few strands of hair that were free from the front of her headdress slid to stick against her forehead.

Against her better medical judgment, she pushed herself to her feet. This was the law of the jungle – the last one to stand was always dinner, and tonight she would not make herself into a meal for the Bat. Bruising, her left arm draped over her cracked ribcage, she waited as the ceiling of his formidable vehicle shifted and then lifted as he raised out of it like a locomotive.

"Are you out of your mind?" his dark, raspy voice called out to her and immediately, she broke into a bout of laughter that would have easily answered his question for him.

"You know..." she said, struggling to straighten herself when she addressed him, "you two really are more alike than either of you will admit. With you, I very rarely get what you ask for until I give up a bit of action. God knows that's the way it is with the Joker..."

He'd started walking toward her no more than twenty feet away, the two of them having to speak loudly over the loud hiss of the falling rain. "Harley!" he called out to her in what could have only been a plea for sanity.

Before he could take another step she exhaled a large sigh and produced her large revolver from the holster at the small of her back. "I thought I told you a while ago... don't _ever_ call me that," she said savagely, gnashing her white teeth between a set of smeared red lips. The gun dangled at her side for a moment, waiting perhaps for another moment of provocation. "I'd hoped that at this point you would take every ounce of the girl you thought you knew and thrown it out the window... if you'd even known her in the first place."

"The person I knew was a doctor who wanted to help people," Batman growled, but it was just another joke to fuel her uproarious laughter.

"He's right, you really _are_ too much, you know that?" she asked, slapping her knee enthusiastically. "I thought you, more than anyone else, would be able to understand the back avenues people take to help others. My job was to treat the Joker. What makes you think I ever stopped?"

The idea flooded his mind through a broken levee of misconception. As much as one could believe that the Joker had turned Harley's mind to madness, these were not the words of a lunatic. What she was suggesting to him now was that somehow, in a very roundabout way... she was attempting to treat the Joker _still_, from behind enemy lines. There wasn't much that Batman could say... but what else could he do? Harley's emotions had been throughly wrapped up in the Joker since the beginning. He'd seen it the night he'd walked the circumference of the Robinson Park fountain with her all those months ago. He'd seen it when she'd struck him hard in the jaw that night at Arkham. He was seeing it now, and it chilled him to the bone how someone like her could love a man like that.

"It's pretty rich to get the morality lecture from you... isn't it?" she shot at him venomously.

"You're too far gone for redemption," he admitted, and when he did, he could almost feel the muscles in her body contract as she lifted the gun she had held idly at her side.

With a confident, cracked smile and took a few forceful steps toward him, "Yeah, well... that makes the two of us."

He didn't require much warning other than her sinister smile. She punctuated the end of her sentence with the pull of a trigger. Harley's aim at such a close distance would have been dead on, but the street corner the two of them had found themselves on was cast in thick shadows that made it difficult make out his moving figure. Hearing the bullet ricochet, Harley immediately turned her attention toward the darkness, widening her eyes in hopes that they would further adjust to the lack of light. It did her little good, though she continued to scan the shadows with the barrel of her loaded gun.

There was a fluttering sound, the ripple of fabric moving across the drenched pavement as the rain slowly whispered to a stop. All was eerily quiet, and Harley sorely wished that she had her back pressed up against something.

The fear was justified, since just as she turned to gaze over her shoulder, her wrists were taken forcefully by his thickly gloved hands and crossed over her chest and behind her back in a straitjacket hold. He squeezed her right wrist hard, causing her to drop the gun. "What are you hoping for, a white-picket fence and a happy ending?" he hollered at her in his gruff tone as he pulled her tight against him to stop her from struggling. "Living this way is only going to get you killed!"

Gritting her teeth she resisted him for a moment, but stopped when she realized there was no way for her to overcome his sheer strength. The pressure he was putting on her obviously fractured ribs made her blood run cold, and made her severely reconsider her plan of action. After rolling her eyes out of his sight, she softened her features and pressed her head back against his chest, craning her neck back to glance up at him affectionately. "Killed?" she asked in a soft voice, as if there was a bottomless fear associated with it. "The Joker said he wouldn't let that happen."

His proximity to her had become an obvious cause for concern. She found it curious the way he had sharply tilted his head up to avoid direct eye-contact with her. "What makes you think he'd keep any promise he ever made you?"

Harley must have felt him relax in response to her feigned affection, and as a result, she scooped one of her ankles behind his and leaned back sharply to displace his weight from under him. She knew he wouldn't fall, but while he was off balance she balled both her hands together and brought them back over her head before swiftly swinging them down across his left cheek. This was just enough to send him to the ground, and now she'd placed him in a position that would make it impossible to avoid eye-contact.

Batman grunted as his back struck the pavement, but it wasn't more than a few seconds before Harley was standing over him, pressing almost the entire weight of her body on her heel as she stood on the inside of his thigh between two of his protective plates. He grunted again in pain, but it only caused her to grind her heel back and forth against the pressure point on his hip.

"You think I'm naïve... that hurts." Batman had grabbed at her ankle, but in the time that it took him to grab her she had swooped down to pick up her gun, and was now straddling his torso, having taken the pressure off his hip. She pulled the hammer back on the gun and pressed it right between his blue eyes. "Sugar, I know I'm goin' down. But if you know me at all... and by your relative casual use of the name '_Harley_', I'm going to assume that you do – than you should know that the only way I'm going down is swingin'."

Batman didn't say a word, and didn't want to give her any emotional ammunition to pull the trigger. With her injuries slowing her reaction time, he might have been able to snatch it away, but he didn't want to underestimate her reflexes. The fact that she'd managed to get him into this position spoke well for her tenacity. Beyond the barrel of the gun, he was met with Harley's curious gaze. There was nothing much he could do besides let her inspect him.

After a moment, though, she slowly and cautiously lowered the hammer of the gun and stood to her feet. He didn't retaliate immediately; as a precautionary measure she'd placed her foot on his sternum, prepared to jump on it at a moment's notice.

"I think the only thing that would make the Joker more angry than _not_ killing you would be to _actually_ kill you. To be completely honest, I'm not up to dealing with his bullshit later on while I nurse a couple of broken ribs. I did what I needed to do...I got you out of the Joker's hair," she explained, but hovered over him a moment longer. Leaning over, she gazed hard at his eyes once more, hoping that something would be triggered by their specific shade of blue. "I don't know who you are... but I'm not looking for any kind of understanding or sympathy. If I was, you think I'd be living with the Joker? Heh..."

Stretching her arm she fired a shot that ricocheted on the pavement beside his thigh. "I'll be sure to keep you on your toes, Batsy," she started, feigning affection once more, "so long as you promise to keep me on mine."

She winked, and he lay there as he listened to her run off into the darkness of an alleyway.

* * *

Dawn on a cloudy day in Gotham City was a mesh of monochromatic hues. Brown, blue, and grey mingled with one another to create a dismal, sleepy landscape. Night owls prayed for days like today, where they could sleep in until the early afternoon and never see the difference in time. It was abysmal to morning birds and businessmen alike, who wished that the sun would come and wake them from a fatigue that endless cups of coffee could not stir them from.

Harley had spent a few hours of the wee morning crawling her way across the city. She'd started out in a brisk run, but when the sounds of the sirens had finally bled away, the humming electrical heartbeat of the city was all that surrounded her. Once the adrenaline rush had worn off, she'd slowed to a slumping crawl, making her way out of the dangerously prying eyes of downtown and into the relative ironic safety of Crime Alley. Once there it hadn't been long until she found Gambol's bar, her heart only dropping slightly when she found the place empty.

In the cover of the bar, she took stock of her injuries, which had been grossly underestimated. Her leather jumpsuit was pulled tight around her torso, but it was causing her a massive amount of pain. The area around her ribcage had begun to swell, the metallic taste of blood swimming in her mouth. She could have a collapsed lung, she could be bleeding internally - there could have been any number of problems caused by the fall from the speeding tumbler, and she was lucky to have made it here in the first place, let alone made it out of a fight with Batman. While she probably should have been headed somewhere for medical treatment, fatigue overcame her...

Pushing the door aside, the sound of her feet shuffling against the dusty floor rage through the silent place. Before long, she made her way over to one of the several booths that lined the wall adjacent to the bar and collapsed, her legs dangling over the edge of the seat as she blacked out into oblivion. Away from the pain, away from the heartache of not knowing whether they were alive or dead, away from searching those blue eyes for any signs of recognition.

The bar settled into the morning grey, and nothing moved other than the swept up dust as it settled against on the old wood floor.

The place stayed this way for several hours. Indeed, it wasn't until night had fallen that the place stirred once more. The door had been hastily opened, and in from the rain outside, Bosco was searching for something, and had been searching for several hours. Once the crew had made their hasty and well timed getaway aided by the slippery rain, the Joker demanded that they all immediately split up in an effort to find his missing girl.

"Chances are she fucked up and got herself killed," the Bear had chided after sucking his teeth loudly in disgust of the girls thoughtless action.

The Joker had just shook his head. "No, he wouldn't kill her... he might have turned her in, but he wouldn't kill her." If Harley had been captured or killed, they would have heard some kind of mention of it on the police scanners they had installed in the truck. Hell, the Gotham City News would have been all over it within a matter of minutes.

"What if it wasn't the Bat who got to her...what if it was these other guys?" Marky had asked, but his idea didn't do much to make the Joker feel any better.

And then fear gripped Bosco when he spotted her - both her lifeless legs hanging over the side of the booth. He hurried over to her, holding on to his belt to keep his rain soaked jeans from falling off as he ran.

"Harley..." he called to her gently, and upon placing his large, eerie eyes on her did he begin to panic. She laid there, limp, her face covered by the shadow of the table that sat between two leather benches. "_Harley_!" he hollered, placing his hand on the table to lean over her. "C'mon chicken! C'mon... Oh, shit." He cupped his hand around her chin and felt for a pulse, somewhat relieved to see that her skin was still warm.

Without another second of hesitation, he rushed back to the entrance and pushed open the door. "Boss! She's in here! She's hurt bad."

There was a impetuous shuffling, the sound of a car door opening and then slamming shut. The Joker's massive purple duster coat buffeted around his knees as he made his way to the booth where Harley's unconscious body was laying. He leaned over the bench just as Bosco had, his voice calm, almost delicate as he tried to speak to her.

"Harley...?" he whispered, taking off his glove to touch her tear-streaked face with his hands, angling it into whatever kind of dim light the bar could offer him. "Shit..." he muttered as he gazed at his fingertips stained with fresh blood as it had trickled out of the side of her mouth. "She's been coughing up blood..." he told Bosco, whose worried eyes scanned over her suddenly frail looking frame.

The Joker lifted himself up onto the tabletop, and motioned for Bosco to take her hand to lift her. Once they'd sat her up, the Joker slid into place behind her, scooping her into his arms. Sliding out of the booth, he stood to his feet, lifting the broken girl into a damsel carry, but once he had he shifted her weight in his arms to give her a good shake. "Harley!" he called out, hoping to rouse her into consciousness. It took him a few tries before her eyes began to stir. "_Harley_!"

Her eyes opened slowly to the Joker's constant jostling, and Bosco bent himself over, placing his hands on his knees as he heaved a sigh of relief. Albeit more silently, the Joker did the same. "C'mon Harl, we gotta wake up, we gotta go..." he whispered to her softly, as she slowly came to, her arm moving up to drape around his neck.

Her bloodshot eyes stared up at him in a moment of recognition before her heavy eyelids fell over them again. He jostled her once more. "No, no, no...c'mon toots, you gotta stay awake for me ok? Who did this to you?" he asked. "C'mon Harl... who did this to you babe?"

The arm that had not wrapped itself around his shoulder had been hanging heavily at her side. Slowly it came up and fell upon her chest. "Me... I did it..."

The Joker gave her a confused glance and sighed, holding onto her tightly. Turning back to look at Bosco, he motioned toward the door with a nod of his head, "Those bastards out there?" he asked, still using his arms and back to gently keep Harley in wakefulness.

"No... they lost us back on Gregory Street. Haven't seen them since. Who the hell are they?" There was a certain level of confusion in his voice as the Joker's gazed moved between Bosco and the now helpless girl in his arms.

He shook his head, a stern look scrawled on his face. "I've seen them before... but I don't know who they are. We're going to have to find out."

The two of them made off toward the door, Bosco holding it open as the Joker made his way through with Harley. "She gonna be OK?"

He jostled her once more as the two of them slipped into the back of the large black Tahoe. "Hey Harley..." he said rousing her again. She shuddered and blinked up at him again with large, hollow eyes. "You hear that? Bos' asked if you're gonna be ok," he teased her mildly in hopes of getting a rise out of her.

A tender, pained smile stretched its way across her bloodstained lips and she moved to place a gentle hand on his chest, curling up as he settled her down on his lap.

Once Bosco as lifted himself up into the driver's seat he adjusted the rearview mirror to offer himself a better look of the two. The Joker didn't notice that Bosco had seen the way he watched her, seen the way he stressed his painted black eyebrows together and leaned his head on hers as the Tahoe pulled away from the curb outside of Gambol's bar.


	50. Chapter 50: Splash

_Note from the Author: Hey guys! Long time so see. I know I've been posting a little infrequently recently, but as of right now I'm going back to posting once a week. So, next Monday you can expect another chapter. I've made all the schedule changes in my profile. There might be another little tidbit of information there if you were so inclined to take a look... Enjoy Chapter 50, guys!_

* * *

The ringing. Oh, the ringing.

It raged on like a forest fire. It began in her ears and moved on through her head in waves, flames lapping at the inner walls of her cranium. Her lungs seemed to fill with acid, and her breath came out in noxious fumes. Her whole body ached and wrenched, and her normally gentle voice scratched her throat like the scream of some dying jungle cat.

Harley had never been in so much pain in her entire life, and it wouldn't relent. Pain kept grinding at her, wearing her down into the flimsy, overused mattress in which she lay. She didn't recognize her surroundings – whenever she had the consciousness to acknowledge them at all. Once in every so often, her gaze would settle on a woman, who she was sure had become her guardian angel: a large, dark-skinned woman who would speak to her in soothing tones, unrecognizable words. Then the pain would cease, and her eyelids would collapse, and sleep would take her once more.

Beautiful, dreamless, painless sleep, lost in oblivion. Harley was sure that this was as close to heaven as she would ever get. Then, some time later – she was never quite sure how much time – her eyes would splinter open, and she would be transported to the depths of hell once again to be gripped in Satan's cold jaws, gnawed at until the end of time.

Or... until someone came to administer another dose of whatever kind of powerful pain med they'd kept her on.

It felt like this went on forever. There was no perception of time, there was no care for it. All Harley knew was that each time she opened her eyes, she could breath a little easier, and the pain in her head became duller and duller until finally, it was gone altogether. Her bruised and swollen eyes opened, and focused sharply on the foreign, stuccoed ceiling over her head. Consciousness poured over her in a waterfall, and she captured a chestful of air. It gave her just the surge of energy she needed to sit up, and survey the room around her.

Harley had never been here before. Light filtered in the room from cheap taffeta curtains which had been hastily pulled over a bar covered window. The room was drab, and the copper-colored carpet was dotted with children's toys and tufts of dog fur. Filled with cheap IKEA furniture, too. Harley discovered that she was laying in a narrow twin bed, not nearly as comfortable as the larger bed she curled up in at the Joker's warehouse.

Why was she here? Why wasn't she there?

"Hello?" she called out in a raspy voice, nowhere near as loud as she had hoped. Raising her brows to clear her throat, she tried again. "Hello?"

From outside she heard someone dragging their slippered feet across the floor. A few seconds later, the door opened. In walked the woman that Harley had recognized from her state of semi-consciousness. She was not nearly as angelic as she had remembered.

The woman was rubbing her eyes; the light coming through the room behind her told Harley it was likely from a mid-afternoon nap. At first she appeared to be rubbing the sleep from her face, but this quickly turned to disbelief. When she it was with spoke with a light West-Indies accent, and had a soft, kind smile. "Praise Jesus! I thought I was going to have to call a priest!" she exclaimed frantically before coming to sit on the edge of Harley's bed.

Harley could only laugh skeptically. "Oh, I assure you he wouldn't have done me much good."

The woman chuckled and patted the back of Harley's hand. Maybe she was an angel after all. After rubbing her own sore eyes, she took a deep breath. "Where am I?"

"My place. My name's LaShonda... but everyone just calls me Shauna," she explained, but it didn't make things much clearer, until she said, "I'm Bosco's girlfriend. Have been for about six years now."

The revelation put a gentle smile on her face and she gazed out over the toy-dotted carpet once more. Nodding to it, Harley watched as Shauna turned her head to look. "You have children?"

With that large white-toothed smile, it was easy to see why the obviously softhearted Bosco would come back to a woman like this. "Yeah, three of them," she said and then jokingly heaved a large sigh of relief. They shared a laugh. "An eight year-old and a six year-old. The youngest is just eighteen months. That's Bos' pride and joy – Creasy. He's her daddy."

For a moment Harley wondered if maybe Shauna lived a life oblivious to what Bosco did for a living until she said, "I better call Bosco and let him know that you're awake. He's out with Mr. J right now, but told me not to hesitate if you came to. It's been almost four days now, so I guess he was thinking..."

"The Joker?" Harley asked suddenly, as her soft-faced caregiver rose from the edge of the bed.

Shauna'd turned to face her with a twisted lip and nodded. "I try not to call him that around here. Me and the kids just call him 'Mr. J' so that that they don't hear anything on the news."

Harley's heart dropped. The Joker was a man of many annoyances. Sometimes just the sound of clattering dishes or a car passing by playing obnoxious music was enough to send him grumbling or worse. The idea of him willfully coming around _children_ left her grappling her breath, so much so that she hadn't noticed her mouth had hung open in disbelief.

"You... the Joker... he comes _here_?" she asked, pointing her finger downward to the floor of the apartment.

Shauna just shrugged. "Yeah, sometimes. He started comin' around a couple years ago. When he did, I told him that I ain't havin' no guns and no face paint up in here..." Harley closed her mouth as the woman changed her tone from kindly-nurse to hardened inner city mother. "I'm tryin' to raise three kids right in the bad part of a hard city, and I don't need him showin' them the way to make a quick buck when they should be workin' hard and goin' to college!"

Regardless of her current living situation, Harley found herself coveting Shauna's life. "I wish I could lay down laws with the Joker that way," she laughed.

Shauna herself smiled back to her and leaned against the doorframe. "Well, you can do bad things but still have a good heart, you know?" she asked, and Harley froze when she said it. "The kids don't know what Bosco and Mr. J do... but I tell them don't bring the drama here, and they don't. I don't think anybody chooses this life because they want to... I think they get caught up in it because there are no other options."

There was a moment of darkness that passed over her, and suddenly she felt very ashamed of herself. "Well, except for maybe me..." she cooed softly and looked at her hands where they were folded together in her lap.

A moment's pause passed between them, where Shauna stared at her chubby hand where it rested on the doorframe. "Naw, I don't think you could help yourself either. I know I followed Bosco into this life... Things are tough but I wouldn't have it any other way."

The two of them shared a knowing grin and Shauna tapped the doorframe with her index finger. "I'mma go call Bosco. You hungry?" she asked Harley, who flopped backwards on the bed, glancing happily out the window to the skyscrapers in her distant view.

"Famished."

* * *

Harley's eyes flashed open when she heard the dog barking. She hadn't known exactly how long she'd been napping, but she awoke this time feeling more revitalized. Glancing to the bedside table, she noticed a plate of sandwiches. As the haze of sleep lifted from her, she sat up again, taking a hold of the plate and placing it gingerly in her lap.

As she was eating, the door opened, and Bosco's eager face greeted her with a large smile. He appeared to be holding back a very large Golden Retriever. "Hey Chicken..." he said to her softly, and she placed the plate back on the opposite bedside table before she waved him in.

"Don't worry Bos', I love dogs." She felt instantly alive as the dog snaked past his legs and to the bedside, where it placed it's long snout on the edge of the bed, seating itself on the floor. She began to scratch it behind the ear as Bosco came in to sit on the edge of the bed, much the way Shauna had not long before.

He gave the dog a friendly pat on it's head before laughing at it's eagerly wagging tail. "Her name's Rosie. Shauna's got a kid, eight years old...he wanted a dog, thought it might be nice considering the neighborhood... turns out she's too much of a wimp to actually guard the place." He laughed and gave Harley a large smile. "I guess I don't have much to worry about."

Rosie hurriedly fled from the room when a whistle came from outside, her long body snaking out through the door from whence she came. "I didn't know you had kids," she said to him, and Harley's heart nearly melted when he beamed with pride.

"Well, only the youngest is mine, but they're all _mine_, you know?"

Harley nodded understanding. She wondered for a second if the Joker was aware of how close he'd brought this small family to the brink, but she thought it best not to bring it up. "I suppose I've been under your care for the last few days?" she asked, and the Joker's bubble-eyed henchman heaved a large exaggerated sigh.

"Well, your left lung collapsed, so we had to bring in a doctor first to drain the blood and inflate it. Luckily we know a couple professionals who'll do some work on the side, no questions asked. You have a couple broken ribs, but we have you on pain-killers, and those should heal in around a month." Harley was shocked at the extent of her injuries, but as it went, Bosco was not quite done. "On top of that, you have a pretty bad concussion. The Aspirin should bring keep the swelling down. Other than that, you're in good shape."

"Oh..." Harley said with a weak smile and nodded, "Great."

"Just be happy you didn't stick around..." Bosco told her, moving to stand up from the bed.

Such a simple sentence and it struck such fear into her heart. So much so that she stood mystified at how he could even think to stand up and walk off after saying something like that. Reaching out, she snatched Bosco by the wrist, a terrified look painted on her bruised face. "What the hell are you talking about? What happened after I left?"

"Don't worry, Chicken... don't worry. No one got hurt," he explained, attempting to put her at ease as he sat back down on the edge of the bed. "Afterward everyone thought that you must have been a psychic or something... the way you got rid of the Batman when you did. Not thirty seconds after you were gone, they showed up."

"They?"

Bosco's thin eyebrows pressed together as he nodded. "Yeah... the crazy killer SWAT team... the ones who killed Brutus Carpozo on television a few months back."

Harley remembered. She had been in one of their therapy common rooms at Arkham. Both the Joker and Jeremiah Arkham had been there when a cartoon broadcast in the middle of the day had cut to a scene involving many disguised men, all of whom appeared to be dressed in SWAT gear. It was the first time Harley had ever seen someone die in such a way, but it certainly wouldn't be the last. "What happened, Bos'?"

Using his thumb to scratch an itch on his cheek, he exhaled a heavy sigh. "Shit... I don't even know where to begin." 

* * *

"What the hell is this?" the Bear had said, as he readied the bazooka to take out a row of squad cars that followed behind the truck. This alarm had immediately garnered the Joker's attention to turned to take a few steps from the side of the truck toward the back.

From behind the group of police cars sped a darkened van. The Joker glared at it with narrow eyes, careful to make a comparison between it and the other SWAT van that followed behind them closely. There were no white markings; there was nothing that expressed to the men who stood observing it in the back of the truck that they were at all associated with the police, and yet a man in heavily armored gear could be seen sitting in the drivers seat, another as his passenger.

The Joker's tongue licked at his scar in curiosity.

Carefully, Bosco had made his way from the cab of the truck, using the emergency handrails mounted on the side before slipping into the still open side panel. "What the _fuck_ is going on?"

No sooner had he asked than the three men in the trailer dove for the ground, covering their heads. Out of the corner of his eye, Bosco spied the unmarked black van, and from out of the top, he could make out a man in SWAT gear armed with what looked like the same model of rocket launcher that the Joker's own group had used nearly a year ago. Save that this time... _they_ were the ones being fired at.

Bosco backed himself up against the wall of explosives behind him, watching as a rocket exploded from the barrel and hurtled toward the truck. Imagine his relief when a misaim caused the rocket to skid under the truck, slide off the edge of the highway and into the river where it exploded into a massive crash of white water.

"Close the doors!" Bosco barked an order. "Fuck the cops! We need to get the explosives to the back of the trailer now and hope to God we can beat them to the wharf."

Everyone, even the Joker, appeared to be in accord, and within just a few moments the back doors of the trailer were closed up and locked tight. The group took a massive risk closing the side sliding door. It left them completely oblivious to what was going on around them. Before they had finally closed it, they were pleased to see that a few squad cars had kept these SWAT guys busy enough to provide some distraction for the Joker's truck.

In the meantime, Bosco kept in tight communication with him on the walkie talkie. "Did you see that, Jeffy?" he'd asked, and received a crackled answer that the rest of the team had not been able to make out. "Get keep a close eye on 'em. The cops probably won't shoot at us, but those guys don't give a shit if they blow the trucks and the cops sky high."

Before Jeffy had the time to even 'Roger' out, the four men had started a conveyer of moving the boxes of explosives from being pressed the front of the trailer to being pressed against the back doors.

"Why the hell are we doing this anyway?" Bear asked while tossing a box to the Joker, who then looked to Bosco as he tossed the box to him.

"You pass your high-school physics class?" Bosco asked him as he braced the boxes against the doors. Bear had just sucked his teeth and grimaced at Bosco who smiled critically at his oafish partner. "Then don't worry your head about it. Just call it 'angular momentum', alright?"

The Joker cracked a large, almost demonic smile to his prized henchmen. "Ah...'truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence'," he quoted rather theatrically, as he tossed Bosco the last box.

Arranging it with the others, he used several bungee cables to secure the payload in place. Bosco heaved a large sigh, knowing that until they got to the wharf, they had put themselves in a massive vulnerability. With any luck, they were considerably closer to South Gotham than they had been just moments ago.

Chaos still ensued outside, and the Joker couldn't help but pull open the sliding side door to take a look.

The police, knowing the danger from the van firing at the Joker's newly acquired explosives, had surrounded the renegade SWAT vehicle in an attempt to slow it down, another heavily armored police vehicle giving chase behind to attempt to disarm their new assailants. He couldn't help cooing in a low laughter. Seemed all too convenient to have the police fending off the team just as they were coming up on their destination. Turning his head, the cold, rainy air wiping the greasy green strands from his dark eyes, he could spy the exit for Gotham's south wharf quickly approaching.

His eyes narrowed in satisfaction. How was it that everything seemed to go just his way? Now all he had to do was pray that the driver could do everything he said he could.

From behind him, Bosco surveyed the surroundings of the truck. "Looks like we're getting close."

The Joker nodded as they emerged from the highway, continuing to head due south. Now the police and the enemy assault team had to follow them single-file, as the truck hustled at top speed through the tightly packed shipping district. Warehouses corresponding with specific pier numbers whizzed past. The rain-soaked pavement clicked and popped underneath their racing tires, and from behind him, the Joker listened to Bosco huff. "I guess that's my cue?" he asked, "Weren't you supposed to talk Harley into doing this?"

The Joker snorted and then motioned behind the speeding truck, "Yeah, I was... but she flew the coop. Literally!"

Bosco shook out his hands to prepare himself. "Listen, once I disconnect this trailer, things are going to get really bumpy back here. Make sure the explosives stay in place. The safest place to land is in the water."

"You giving me pointers now? I'm the one who came up with this idea in the first place," the Joker scoffed, then moved to shove him hastily out of the side panel. "The same goes for you."

Holding his breath, and glancing casually at the long line of cars that followed after them, Bosco carefully took hold of the handrails that carried him from the cab of the truck to trailer. Instead of returning to the passenger seat, he slid in behind the rig to where it connected to the trailer. On the control panel there, he disconnected the main hitch. Already he could hear the alarms blaring inside the truck. Cutting off a number of the electrical cables from the trailer, the alarm promptly stopped.

All that remained was the emergency hitch – two iron rods that held the trailer in place on the rig. Two might have been able to sustain the weight of the trailer... but one would not. Using all the strength he could muster, Bosco was careful to remove the right emergency hitch, knowing that the left one would serve as the axis for their dangerous little stroll through the world of physics, and crossed his fingers.

The truck had now made its way on to the pier, a wide length of reinforced concrete that stretched out over the Gotham Harbor and out into the ocean. The left side of which was lined by a large cargo ship headed for God-knows-where. Bosco really had no time to pay it any mind, since he was focused exclusively on grabbling on to small metal handlebars welded to the trailer. The Joker, along with Marky and the Bear, had lined up along the side entrance of the trailer, each holding onto a leather strap in order to hold themselves in place. The long line of cars behind them slowed, though nowhere near as quickly as the unmarked van, which made a screaming U-turn. The Joker smiled, though the other two men were not entirely sure why.

Just beyond the cargo ship was another, smaller, aerodynamically shaped boat, with a wide, steel reinforced deck, its hull sitting nearly completely level with the pier. From where the police were waiting for what would be the truck's eventual stop, they couldn't see it behind the massive cargo ship sitting idle in Gotham Harbor.

And then, the maneuver they'd all been waiting for.

The truck lurched into a sudden right turn, jack-knifing the truck into a tailspin. All four men in the trailer held on direly as the trailer, breaking loose from its last remaining emergency hitch, tore free of the rig and landed with a clangor on the deck of the hidden boat. The momentum flung the Joker along with his three henchman into the salty waters of the harbor.

Bosco remembered very little short of the absolute darkness of the water, the sound of sirens, and above it all, the Joker's maniacal laughter.

* * *

"The boat with the shipping container took off like lightning, and was half way up the harbor before the cops even got to the end of the pier. They must have thought we were all onboard - we could hear Gordon cursin' a blue-streak a couple minutes after everything had quieted down," Bosco explained, and Harley couldn't help but chuckle.

"But what about the men in the unmarked van?" she asked, from where she had curled up along the headboard to listen to the tale.

"Dunno... we heard on the scanners later that the cops had chased them for several blocks but they disappeared into thin air." He seemed to give the idea a moment's thought. "But we saw a similar car following the Tahoe while we were looking for you. I don't know if they lost interest or if we lost them, but we didn't see them past midtown."

"We?" The curiosity in Harley's face confused Bosco, her hands wrapped around a cool cup of tea that Shauna had brought her. "Who ended up finding me?"

"We did! The Joker and me..." he exclaimed, clearly surprised by the fact that she had no recollection of it.

She didn't. "I didn't want to become this massive liability... you know?" Harley asked, disappointed that she'd ended up in this condition. "I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth keeping around."

"Oh, you did more than that Chicken..." he said, reaching out to pat her a couple times on the knee to recapture her attention as she glanced sadly into her teacup. When she looked up at him again he was wearing a bright smile. "You got everyone thinking you're psychic or something. If you hadn't gotten the Bat out of there, we all would have been pinched for sure. I don't think the Joker's gonna care how you did it, just that you did."

She gave him a doubtful look, but he did whatever he could to quell her fears. "Listen to me... you took one for the team. Because of you, everyone else got out without a scratch. God only knows what would have happened if Batman had stuck around." When she blushed, Bosco scoffed and offered her a large shrug, "Who knows! Maybe he would have go-go-gadget'ed that big fuckin' tank of his into a speed boat. Then we really would have been up Shit Creek."

The two of them shared a laugh, but Harley stopped promptly when her fractured ribs caused her to catch her breath. Bosco leaned over, grabbing a bottle of pills from her bedside table, shaking a couple out into his hand and offering them to her. "Take these..."

While Harley was taking a large swig of tea to wash them down with, she heard the dog barking at the front door, whining with excitement as the screen door opened behind it.

Bosco turned and thumbed toward the door. "There he is!" he exclaimed and stood up from the bed. "Oh! And if you were looking for some sympathy from him, now's the time to get it. Whether you want to believe it or not, he's been worried about you, I can tell," he whispered to Harley, who could hear the sound of the Rosie's feet dancing on the linoleum floor.

Bosco stepped out the door of Harley's makeshift bedroom, and disappeared into the apartment's narrow hallway. She heard whispering, and recognized the whisper that followed immediately after Bosco's. Already she could feel the tips of her fingers quivering in anticipation. It was remarkable to her how that blur of unconsciousness could still make it feel like an eternity since she'd last seen him.

Still curled up against the wooden headboard of the flimsy twin bed, Harley's hands could have crushed the ceramic mug in her hands as he came down the hall. His footsteps came closer and closer before they stopped altogether, just beyond her view. There, he hesitated for a moment, the light from the open door just deepening the darkness of the windowless hallway.

"How ya doin' kiddo?" the Joker's airy trickster voice uttered from the hallway.

Harley's voice caught in her throat, tied in knot, after knot, after knot that she swallowed painfully. Placing the cup on her bedside table, her mind screamed out to her that she had never wanted to see someone so badly in her entire life. Gingerly, and for the first time in days, she stood from the bed, thankful that she'd spent the last four days sleeping in some unfamiliar, black, chiffon, baby-doll pajamas, and not in the constricting catsuit. She stood on the other side of the door, basked in the soft white light of the window, just out of his view.

"Did I make the cut, boss?" she asked, and he must have been surprised to hear her voice so close by, since her craned his neck around the door frame to spy her.

There she was, standing, ankles crossed, delicate curious fingers gripping her bottom lip, watching for his approval, though she knew she already had it.

She smiled.

He smiled back. One of those genuine smiles that she began living for. The rest of him wrapped around the door frame and snaked into the room.

This was perhaps the first time that Harley realized the kind of physical shield he held over himself at all times. How impenetrable and how untouchable he'd become in her mind. So much so that, when he took a step closer to her, she took a step back. She took another one, and another one, when the only thing she wanted to do was reach out for him.

"Are you alright?" she asked finally, as she sat on the edge of the bed once again, glancing at her feet as he slid out of his ratty blazer, setting it on a wooden chair by the door.

Taking a deep breath, he shook his head, and smoothed out the wrinkly striped dress shirt he had been wearing underneath. "No...not really," he said, looking down over himself before he offered her a sharp glance. "I came here looking for my girl, you know... the one who jumps on to speeding batmobiles? Have you seen her?"

"Your girl?" Harley asked with the faintest grin spreading over her lips.

He didn't say anything, but came to her bedside and knelt down next to the bed, his face housing a kind of sincerity that she almost never saw from him, particularly from just a strange vantage point. "Heh, well... I don't know anyone else tough enough to roll with me," he teased. "You should have seen her a year ago... she was a top-notch wuss! But I kept on her, and now she's a freight-train. Now she's a lion."

She inhaled deeply as the Joker's ungloved hand made her way up the back of her bare calf. "How kind of you. But what has she done to you?"

He took a moment to think, his fingertips dancing along the underside of her thigh "Oh, she does what she can, but she doesn't have a lot to work with," he explained, the tips of his fingers just making their way to the hem of her pajama shorts.

Without hesitation, she flattened her palm and moved to swing it at his face, but his free hand easily, and almost eagerly captured it, a smile spreading over both of their twisted mouths. "Ah! There she is..." he cooed, standing as both his hands moved to gently cup her chin. "That's my girl..."


	51. Chapter 51: Hope

The rain had started falling again as the two of them made their way down the back steps of Bosco's low-rise apartment. The Tahoe sat there, waiting for them, getting pelted with rain on the buckled concrete.

The Joker offered Harley his tattered blue blazer to hold over her head as she made her way down the steps to the car, but not before Shauna had given her a gentle hug. Harley thanked her for her kindness, but the large woman waved her off. "Never you mind. I know someone out there would do the same for me," she said. Harley couldn't help but wonder if she was right, considering the circles they travelled in.

She was slow to get into the car, caught off guard as the Joker stood behind her to close the door after her. Afterward, he hopped in the driver's side, the tinted windows considerably darkening the inside of the cabin as he turned over the engine, driving off through the mixed Gotham residential area.

The niceties stopped there.

"Are you out of your god-damned mind!" he called out to her, heaving an empty, disposable coffee cup from the cup holder and toward the seat she was sitting in.

Immediately she raised her hands in defence, but gasped loudly as her ribs arched and ached, her palms falling back down to rest at her sides. The Joker's aggression was a flash in the pan, and he had to swerve to maintain his composure on the road after reaching out a hand toward her.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, keeping her eyes locked on the road in front of them, "I was doing what I could to get him out of your hair."

"He's no small fry! He's not Gordon or just some guy with a gun," he tried to explain, but it fell on deaf ears.

Rolling her eyes in a wildly exaggerated way, she turned to him with a coy smile. "I know that. You think I thought you were a small fry when I decided to take you on as a patient? Sometimes I think you forget our origins. I wasn't going to dive in without at least acknowledging what I was in for." Her explanation appeared to stir something in him, because he furrowed his eyebrows as he carefully watched the road in front of him. "I considered for a moment that I might not see you again... but I held my breath, and I jumped anyway."

"Why?" he asked coldly, his immovable stare stretching out in front of the car.

Turning just her neck, she offered him a soft glance, curled lips waiting for him when he finally did took his eyes away from the road to regard her. "Because I know it's something you would have done."

He turned to her for a moment, surprised. The thought appeared to stew in his mind for a moment, and before long a smile began to emerge across his cracked mouth. "Yeah, sounds about right."

"It's high time people started to understand that I am a willing extension of you. Coerced, mindless henchmen do not jump between racing vehicles," Harley explained with chagrin, crossing her arms over her chest before realizing that placing pressure upon it was not a good idea.

The Joker only scoffed. "You got an axe to grind?"

"Why do you keep asking me that?"

A nonchalant shrug pulled through his shoulders. "I dunno, because you seem like you've got an axe to grind."

Maybe it was true. It seemed like half of everything she did was to prove to someone, _everyone_ that she was capable of making her own decisions. Sometimes it was the Joker, sometimes the police, and sometimes it was the whole of Gotham. Either way, it left her in a compromising position, always having someone to impress.

"Either way toots, I think they're getting the message," he said, easing into a left turn that would take them to the highway and up to the industrial area of the city.

"What do you mean?" she asked, confused.

The Joker curled his lips, clearly regretting what he'd said to some degree, but Harley kept a set of defiant eyes on him until he heaved a large sigh and caved. "The last few days have been nothing but reports on the news regarding your little incident. Gordon and your _mother..._" he said with contempt, "...have been trying to convince the public of your endearing innocence and other virtuous qualities that have long since died on account of you shacking up with me."

"_Shacking up_?" Harley asked out of sheer curiosity, but the Joker failed to acknowledge it.

"But, thanks to the GCN and their continued efforts to cause more drama than the cast of the Jersey Shore, a recent poll suggests that the public just isn't buying what they're selling."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that the public thinks that you're a foolhardy, crazy, psychopath of your own accord," he explained.

Had she been able to jump for joy, she just might have. Clapping her hands together, she bounced in her seat in a state of unadulterated bliss. "Yay! What more could I have asked for?"

"Well, not so fast. There's still a lot of people who don't think so... and you have _dear old_ _mum_ to thank for that. Seems that some people, a lot of people, are believing that her cries are just a desperate mother's pleas for the cops to go easy on her only remaining child. But public sympathy for your little adventure is still high." he explained, and Harley heart dropped a little. "The city is torn over the mind of the mysterious Harleyquinn..." he grumbled as he loomed over the steering wheel.

"You think some are buying into it?" she asked.

The Joker just shrugged and shook his head. "Kind of hard to tell. I wish that she would keep her nose of it."

Harley couldn't disagree. Her mother had never been one to get too involved with her life. Having a older brother meant most of the house rules were broken before she could ever get to them, and her mother's parenting style was relaxed to say the least. She never had to sneak in late, never had to check in at night – turns out discipline was pretty lax where the man of the house was a convicted felon.

Now that she had deduced that Harley was in some majorly hot water, this was the choice time to stick her neck out in hopes that people would find some way to believe that her daughter was a innocent, brainwashed sufferer of Stockholm syndrome.

She was angry, and yet guilty at the same time. Harley thought to herself for a good long time, enough time for the Joker to swipe his card key at an unmanned security station and drive in through the gated entrance. "What if I was able to get her off our back somehow?"

"Offing your own mother?" he asked, shooting her a stern, though clearly joking, glance. "That's _cold_!"

She couldn't help but giggle at the off colour joke. "No! Not kill her. Talk to her."

He hit the brakes and stared back at her with his large dark eyes. "Are you out of your mind? How the hell do you plan on pulling that off without getting yourself nicked? They probably have a cop car sitting outside her house for that exact reason."

Harley clucked her tongue at his paranoia. "Since when are you afraid of one cop car? There was twenty of them the other night. C'mon! Don't be stupid. Gordon's got every pig scouring the streets, anyway. You honestly think he's going to place _Francine Quinzel_ under high security? Besides, we've pulled off far craftier before. What's a five minute conversation gonna cost us?"

"Your life, if you're not careful!" he chimed out as he continued to drive through the maze of warehouses.

She shrugged. "Alright then, so I'll be careful. It's not something we have to do right this very instant. And what's the matter with you? You're usually the one who's suggesting all these off-the-cuff, high risk ideas. Why can't I suggest one of my own?"

The Joker was silent for a moment, his shifting eyes moving over the landscape of grey stainless steal buildings. It was several seconds before he spoke. "Because the last time you made a decision you nearly got yourself killed."

A cheeky smile spread across Harley's mouth and she wrapped a hand around his bicep, leaning over to place a kiss on his cheek. "And what _would_ you do without me, Puddin'?" He grinned a very small grin.

"Find some other chick stupid enough to get herself killed for me," he teased in his usual abrasive tone before reaching over to retrieve the modified garage door opener which would grant them entrance into his warehouse.

Giving his arm a gentle squeeze, "Aw... c'mon," she purred, "part of you couldn't help but love it when I flew through the air and rode that tank like a mechanical bull," she teased as the truck descended into the basement. "And you better tell me the truth, or I'll ask Bosco and he'll tell me."

"He _will_ not," the Joker croaked as he drove from the panel and into the Tahoe's nearby parking spot.

"Well then this time we'll play by your rules. You tell me what to do and how to do it, and I'll make sure everything goes off without a hitch," she explained, and the Joker froze for a moment before opening the door.

"Alright, well here's my rule: It's not going to happen, so stop thinking about it." He slid out of the car and walked around the back of it, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his worn trousers. Giving chase didn't seem to help her cause. His arms held stiff as his neck slumped over enough to give him a hunched look.

"This woman is sitting at home convincing herself that her helpless, brainwashed daughter is being manipulated by some psychopath. Think what you want about her, but we both know that's not what's happening here," Harley told him, gesturing toward the now closing panel behind them. "I could go, talk to her, and you wouldn't even know I was gone."

He snapped. His hands came out of his pockets and gestured wildly as he spoke, his face a mere few inches from her own. "No more! No more half-baked plans, no more going where I can't keep tabs on you, no more jumping out of trucks, alright? No more," he recited before turning to move through the warehouse and toward the elevator.

But Harley, with her newfound worth as a trusted part of the Joker's team would not stand for it. "What?" she asked, indignant. "Me taking initiative had been a point of pride just a few moments ago, and now you want to stifle me? If something happened in the last few minutes that requires me to prove myself _yet again_, just tell me and I'll go out and break a couple more ribs, alright?"

He whipped around and gave her a firm glance with a pair of stressed eyebrows. "Harley..." he hesitated, his hand outstretched to silence her, "Just... don't."

She'd tried her best to assess his face, but something about his expression appeared conflicted. Her own features softened as she trudged after him, defeated. She didn't understand...her actions had seemed so admirable only hours before, and now it seemed like everything she'd done had been wrong. He'd changed his mind so suddenly, that Harley had to wonder that this was yet another mood swing, another marker of his mental health.

But as the two of them travelled up the elevator together, she couldn't help but notice something of a forlorn look in his face as she stole momentary glances of him. The way he stood, arms crossed, heavy eyes regarding an empty corner of the slow-moving steel room. For a moment, her mind wandered toward worry... not for him, but perhaps the worry that Bosco had made casual mention of. The sudden burst of anger when the two of them were finally alone, and now the despondent way he was acting toward her outlined Bosco's earlier assumption.

Whether he wanted to admit it or not, he had been worried about her, and her willingness to jump into their next bit of mischief was enough to illustrate that worry to even his oblivious self. Perhaps for the first time, he'd been worried about someone, and that was more than he'd ever done for himself.

"I've made some changes around the place..." he grumbled as he lifted the thick chain mail gate and entered his makeshift apartment.

The changes hadn't been apparent to her immediately. In the darkness, the place looked the same as the last time she'd been there, nearly a week ago now. As he flipped the switches on a couple of lights, however, Harley could see that everything appeared to be in the same place, but different somehow. Should couldn't place her finger on what, but that might have been the painkillers slowly beginning to kick in. She shuffled along the floor, idly taking into account that it was sturdier. Looking down, she noticed the rickety mesh that she'd been walking on since she'd come to live here had been replaced with a floating hardwood floor. Nothing shook and shifted as she made her way from one edge of the apartment to the other, for once feeling like she wasn't suspended on tightrope over a perilous drop.

He'd also polished the place considerably.

"Is this what you did with yourself the last few days?" Harley asked in a series of gently slurred words as she held on to the banister which lead upstairs.

"Well I had to keep myself busy somehow," he muttered tossing the keys to the Tahoe onto a newly installed island countertop. "Between this and research... well, I didn't manage to get very bored."

It was then that Harley got a look at the kitchen. Everything was new – new appliances, new cupboards, the new floors installed underneath. Even the ratty old leather sofa in the living room had been replaced with a new, sleeker one, a gleaming black coffee table placed near by.

Now this was an interesting development. Her mind swam with questions, so many that she didn't quite know what to say. It still housed enough grittiness to make the place unmistakably his own, but there was enough comfort to cause her a sigh of relief. He stood more or less in the middle of the massive room, the features of his face darkened by his hair before he moved in to the kitchen to open the fridge.

Taking a breath, she watched him as he poured water from a plastic pitcher into a white coffee mug and brought it to his mouth, watching her as she continued to look around the place in amazement.

"Why did you do all this?" she asked in a state of utter astonishment, noticing that the wood flooring continued up the stairs.

He shrugged nonchalantly, looking down into the contents of his cup as he pulled it away from his face. "Well, I figured there was no getting rid of you now, so maybe you might like having some...sure footing."

Her expression softened as her mind cemented his perceived worry. She was about to open her mouth when he motioned her up the stairs, "You haven't seen everything yet." Glancing up the upward, she was almost afraid to see what waited for her at the top. Carefully she began to ascend, and noticed that not long afterward, the Joker had followed her.

His sparsely used work area was tidier than she had remembered. As she climbed to the top of the stairs to the bedroom, she immediately noticed the oddly dispersed furniture had been replaced. The rickety old wardrobe had been updated with a darker one with a black wood finish. Boxes of her belongings once strewn about the far wall had been removed, a couple of dark wood dressers in their place. The ratty, greasepaint-stained sheets had been replaced with a dark purple duvet pulled over crisp white sheets and thick down-filled pillows, a headboard of decoratively woven silks draped down to the floor.

Harley's stern eyes turned to him, mouth agape. "What did you do? Subscribe to '_Home and Garden_'?" she asked in stupefaction.

"Yeah, the Japanese reflecting pond is getting installed next week. You don't like it?" he suggested, a willful grin playing over his lips.

"No! I love it. But..." And here she trailed off for a moment, passing her hand of the decorative silks that hung behind the bed. This wasn't him... there was no way he would have done this for himself, and the Joker only ever did things for himself, so why was all of this here? He didn't egg her on to finish her sentence, and she didn't much feel like getting into a long conversation about his feelings, seeing as that usually got them nowhere. She noticed that adjacent from the bed, mounted on the wall was a fairly large television.

Harley had learned by now that the best way to get answers out of the Joker was to egg him on playfully. Direct questions always seemed too much like psychoanalysis to him. "What are you doing, making yourself a little love nest?" she asked, and was at a loss for words when he furrowed his brows and looked off.

"Heh, you wish!" he scoffed. "I had a T.V. put up here because I was told you need to be kept under close watch for the next couple weeks, seeing as you're _concussed_. I've going to have to keep myself entertained somehow."

Harley did remember being told of her condition by Bosco, but it hardly seemed reason enough to transform his makeshift loft into something a yuppie might pay a quarter-million dollars for. The exposed girders in the ceiling added an industrial touch to the place, but the rest of it seemed spotlessly clean. Strange considering it had probably never been cleaned until Harley moved in. "You had some help though, didn't you?" she wondered and watched as he shrugged his shoulders.

"To be honest I didn't do much of it. I just told some guys to clean the place up. I think Marky might have brought in his girlfriend for this part... I dunno..." he mumbled, looking off in the opposite direction to avoid her gaze. "I might have mentioned the need for a woman's touch, seeing as how you're probably going to be here for a while at least. I had my hands tied with other things..."

As the months had gone by, he'd become more transparent. The Joker took massive strides to mask his affection for her, and sometimes just to throw her off his trail he'd spit out a cruel comment, or pick an argument with her in some way. But with time, she'd been wearing on him, and it was beginning to show more and more.

The Joker was a man who wasn't afraid of death, or anything that might come as a consequence of death – but for a moment Harley considered that maybe he'd been afraid of her dying. That in itself might have provoked such a change. Expecting someone to come home was a kind of hope that was just disconnected enough for the Joker to find comfortable.

Sometimes she wished that he'd make it easier on himself and just admit it, but who was she kidding? It would be far less fun that way.

"So, you had it installed for yourself?" she asked.

"Psh!" he laughed and shook his head, still refusing the make eye contact. "I've hardly been up here in months. No, this is your... general, you know... area," he choked, gesturing his hands across the room.

Harley smiled taking a few steps toward him, "So, you had it installed for me." If it hadn't been one, then it most certainly must have been the other, and either way, it suggested a kind of generosity that she knew would make the Joker uncomfortable.

It must have because as she came closer, he wandered about the room, as if expecting the changes for the first time. "No... No, I don't think I'd go _that_ far," he cooed through a wearisome, faintly open mouth.

She wanted to laugh. He was like a child. He _wanted_ to admit that he had done it of his own accord, but he didn't want to appear overly considerate. Perhaps he even wanted to suggest that affection or worry had been involved somehow, but he didn't want to be considered compassionate. He must have known somewhere along the line that he'd be get himself caught in the web of Harley's questioning.

But, in what might have been a move of compassion toward him, Harley done something she'd never done with the Joker before.

She let it go.

There was no way in hell that he'd crumble, confess that he'd been sick with worry, holding on to any shred of hope that she'd be alright. He couldn't possibly admit that he was worried for her future, to the point where the mere suggestion of a new diabolical plan would send him into a rage of adamant protection. For some reason, right at that moment, there was a sense of acceptance that washed over her. You can't get blood from a stone, and the Joker had proved himself to be the toughest stone of them all. But, in a measure of everything else she received, she knew it was quite a bit.

She sighed, stuffing her hands into the pockets of a pair of white linen pants. Glancing out over the room and back down the stairs toward the rest of the apartment, she nodded her head in approval. "I really like it," she told him, and beamed a large smile up at him as he turned his eyes on her once she'd stopped asking questions.

"Yeah?" he asked in a gruff tone.

"Yeah, I really do. Feels homey, you know? Like... more comfortable, but it's still a little gritty and I like that. It's got a lot of character," she admitted, and this must have loosened him up a bit, since the next thing out of his mouth was an attempt to boost his ego.

"Yeah, not like your last place," he scoffed and moved over to the wardrobe, opening it.

Harley smiled when she couldn't help but notice his unmistakable outfit hanging next to her own red and black leather one-piece. She handed him his blazer that she had draped over her shoulders, and he hung it up where before he might have thoughtlessly tossed it onto the floor in a lump. With his back turned to her, he felt the need to point out her own belongings hanging there.

Sighing heavily she sat on the edge of the bed, bringing her knees up underneath her as she watched the Joker leaf through a few things. "I am serious about talking to my mother though," she mentioned it again, hoping that the steam generated by the topic earlier had blown off.

As she spoke, she could see the Joker's shoulders tense up as he closed both doors of the wardrobe at once. "It's not going to happen."

"Not right this instant it's not, but the way I see it is that I can do it with you or without you, and I'd rather have you there with me." Harley's conviction must have soothed him a bit. His shoulders dropped and he turned to look at her, craning his neck to look behind him.

"Why bother? You know what she's going to say," he told her, turning to lean his back against the dark backdrop of the wardrobe. "She's going to convince you to turn yourself in, like any good mother would ask their prodigal child."

Harley nodded in agreement, "Yeah, you're probably right. But, you see... my mother and I have more in common now than we ever have before," she explained, and it piqued his curiosity enough for him to move over to stand and the foot of the bed.

"And what's that?" he asked, hands stuffed in the pockets of his wrinkled wool pants.

"Well," she began as she crawled toward him across the mattress, kneeling high on her knees as she picked away an imaginary fluff from his shoulder, "You see, my mother and I both have an affinity for what society deems unlawful men."

'_Affinity_,' the Joker mouthed to her very deliberately and Harley nodded as he pursed his lips thoughtfully.

"Without her weight behind him, Gordon's going to have a hard time convincing anyone of the fact that I'm an innocent little lamb caught in the clutches of a sick mastermind."

Something must have appealed to him, and although Harley didn't know if it was her proximity, or the idea she had suggested, his tongue traced the corner of his mouth in thought. She could almost feel the wheels turning inside his head. "You think I'm a lion, right? Well... the rest of Gotham ought to think so too... After all, everyone thinks so _highly_ of you. What's to say they shouldn't think the same of me?" she asked and the two of them shared a chuckle as she wrapped her arms around his neck loosely.

"It can be on your terms entirely. But I know that she won't stop until she understands what I'm thinking," she told him in a voice hardly above a whisper and offered him an affectionate glance, just as a small insurance policy should he find away around her logic. "Trust me, she could never convince me to leave this place. The _Clown Prince_ of Gotham has set me up in _quite_ the ivory tower here. Why would I go anywhere?"

"Appealing to my ego, are you?" he asked, a calloused hand gliding down the length of her forearm and stopping at the elbow. She smiled at him eerily, and he took his eyes off her long enough to circle up to the ceiling and back down again. "Well, you've always been good at that."

"S'why I'm still here, isn't it?" she winked at him, her arms sliding out from around him, moving backwards on the bed until she could slump onto her side to snuggle with a pillow. The dim lights from either beside table filled the room with a soft white glow that bounced off the ivory sheets.

Harley listened as his footsteps moved over to her side of the bed, where he opened the small drawer in the table next to her, and could hear him remove a series of pill bottles. She turned over and watched him place a set of painkillers on the table top. "It's just acetaminophen with codeine... it's not too powerful, but it'll knock you on your ass if you're not careful," he told her as she nuzzled herself into the pillow.

He watched her for a moment longer, sighing heavily as he rose to his full height again. "Alright, fine! We'll pay a visit to dear _ol'mumsie_. But it'll be on my terms, and it won't be until you're in peak condition again," he barked, pointing at her with a wagging finger.

She smiled and turned her face into the pillow, blinking up at him a few moments later. "Thank you. I promise, you won't be disappointed with the outcome."

"Mmhm... Just save it, alright? You screw this up and I won't let you charm me into another one of your bird-brained ideas, got it?" He moved around the bed, making his way back toward the stairs.

Quickly turning over, she watched him curiously before sitting up. "Hey! Do you think you could watch the news up here tonight? It's relaxing to fall asleep with the T.V. on..." she lied, looking up to the large black square mounted in perfect view of the bed.

"Yeah, I said _someone_ had to keep a close eye on you... you see anyone else around?" he asked, then glanced about the place to see if, in fact, there was anyone else. "Unless you want to dry swallow your pills, then _someone_ is going to have to get you some water, huh?" He shuffled off down the stairs, whistling a tune that Harley could place immediately, when she shut her eyes and lay herself back down, she laughed at his inclination toward exaggeration.

He hummed a melody from _Cinderella_, as he pranced around the kitchen fetching her a drink. In her heart, she knew he couldn't have been more happy to wait on her.


	52. Chapter 52: Devil

A house so large with so few people in it feels about as barren as a desert. There is life, or at least proof of life, but nothing seems to live at all.

That had always been the way Lucius Fox felt about Wayne manor. He lived in a humble, book filled apartment in the north end of Gotham. Coming to a place like this with so few people dwelling within it seemed something of a waste. Lucius knew better than to mention the idea of family here; a sore subject in these hallowed halls.

"Take your coat Mr. Fox?" Alfred had asked him politely as he held open the door with one hand, extending the other out toward him. Lucius didn't much care for the ideas of butlers, viewing Alfred as more of a confidant than a personal servant.

Kindly, he shook his head. "No, that's alright. This place is so big... well, it kinda of gives me the chills just looking at it." In truth it was only a sports jacket. He readjusted his collar from what had been a breezy day outside as Alfred closed the door behind him.

Summer was setting in now, but the air from the harbor nearby was cool this time of the day. Early morning was the only time he could commit to without a suspicious absence from Wayne Enterprises. Bruce had been willing to comply, though the hour had sent Lucius wondering exactly how much sleep he'd been getting.

Once he came around the corner from the kitchen, it was easy enough to tell.

Rough around the edges was not quite enough to describe the displaced Mr. Wayne. Regardless of his rigorous routine of self-preservation, the dark circles under his eyes and five o'clock shadow could not be concealed so early in the morning. It was rare to see the young man so distant from his normal dapper self. He must have noticed when Lucius gave him a strange glance.

"It's been a long few nights," Bruce told him quietly, waving him through the hallway and toward the steps at the far end of his country kitchen.

Lucius felt overdressed in his three piece suit next to Bruce's pajama bottoms and tight white tank-top, but none-the-less he followed the him down a long flight of narrow stairs, the light from the kitchen disappearing behind them. The sounds of Bruce's trudging slippers and sipping coffee led his way through the darkness.

Before long the two men had emerged into the glass enclosure buried deep below the South-East corner. Lucius hadn't been here since he'd come to deliver the Tumbler, but he hardly remembered the dankness of the place. Perhaps it had been the excitement that had colored his perception. Often times Lucius couldn't help but get swept away in the adventure of it all, and these meetings only sent him guessing as to what the next piece of intrigue might be.

Had Lucius been reading the story of Gotham as a book, he might have found himself captivated by its complexity and danger. But this wasn't some child's story book, this was the city he lived in, and this was his friend going out night after night, risking his life for its citizens. He'd watched as Bruce lost friends and the hope for a normal life. He'd brought this craziness on himself, and both of them knew this. Still, he couldn't help but feel terribly for him.

In an effort to do what he could to protect him, Lucius made himself available for Bruce's early morning meetings whenever he could, before going of to have a _perfectly normal_ day at the office.

"S'been so long since I've been here, I hardly recognize the place," Lucius said in his calmest voice, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his beechwood trousers as he scanned over the steely walls of the place.

Bruce tried his best to muster a smile as he lazily dropped himself into the command chair, swiveling around to the panel of monitors. "Yeah, I know... though, if I had it my way, none of us would have to come here." Taping on a few of the controls, the two men watched the screens as a jumble of images bounced quickly across them. One of them have video surveillance from the highway the night of the robbery, the other was doing a scan of news footage of the van that had been chasing the Joker's truck, another still was circulating through a weapons databank.

"I've got more problems than I know how to deal with, Lucius," Bruce said in the defeated tone he casually adopted any time he came to the old man for help. It was endearing enough to work on him.

"Oh, well... I wouldn't go so far as to say that, Mr. Wayne," he encouraged him and offered Bruce a weak smile. "What's your new objective?"

The look on his face solemnly told Lucius that Bruce himself wasn't entirely sure. Truth of it was, he'd caught himself between a rock and a hard place, and was sweating in an effort to be proactive. After a few moments of silence, Lucius thoughtfully crossed his arms over his chest, letting out a sizable sigh. "Alright, well let's start from the beginning. What has you so hesitant?"

"Oh, well than you don't know after all," Alfred's cheery voice echoed from the stairwell, where he was carrying a silver tea service tray. "Master Wayne has yet another personal interest in the case of the Joker. Not for the Joker per se, but more for his new accomplice."

"The Harleyquinn woman, you know her?" Lucius asked, turning sharply to regard Bruce with curious eyes.

Turning to the monitors again, Bruce turned on yet another monitor, the display playing a segment of the surveillance tapes the night the Joker had escaped from Arkham Asylum. "Consider her an old friend..."

"Ain't that a fly in the ointment..." Lucius muttered to himself, his hand rising to tweak his own chin thoughtfully. For the seconds that passed, he considered for a moment what Bruce would have to do. To Lucius it was clear that things were not going to end up well for the girl. For the life of him, he couldn't understand why a doctor like she had been would willingly leave for that life.

"I image you're having a crisis of conscience then?" he asked in a fatherly way before reaching out for a cup of tea that Alfred was handing him on a saucer.

"Drawing out the Joker will inevitability draw Harley out as well. He's not in the same position he used to be in. He's using her as a shield, as a weapon." Bruce's face was apprehensive as he watched the vulgar footage of the leather clad woman bludgeoning a security guard to death with his own club.

"This was the woman who was riding topside on the tumbler just the other day?" Impressed, he raised his dark freckled eyebrows and scoffed as he offered Alfred an humbled glance. After taking a sip of tea, he placed the delicate cup back on the tiny plate he held in his hand. "Well, I got bad news for you, son. No amount of technology is going to help get your friend back. If your priority is bringing the Joker down, then you need to consider for a moment that this friend of yours might not be thrilled about that."

"I don't think I'm looking for that, but I..." Bruce sighed and rubbed his forehead, widening his eyes when he realized he wasn't entirely sure how to finish his sentence.

Alfred had been strangely quiet as the two of them had been speaking, pouring yet another cup of tea. Upon taking notice, Bruce stretched out his arm as if to stop him, motioning to the coffee cup nearby. "Oi, and what makes you think that this is for you?" he'd said in an accent that was more cockney than his usual tone.

Lucius and the suddenly sprightly eyed Bruce shared an amused glance as the gentlemen's gentlemen leaned against the console counter, balancing his cup much the way Lucius did. "I think it's safe to say that for the time being, Dr. Quinzel and the Joker are not your biggest threat."

This idea confused Bruce considerable, and his gave his head a shake at the very presumption. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean... the Joker creates his advantage by knowing a thing or two about his mark. He makes assumptions, and me makes them very well, but than... so do you, Master Bruce. Over the last year you've learned a little more about the Joker, tactically you two are on the same playing field."

The old man had a point. So much so, that Lucius raised his brows in consideration for a moment, but Bruce was lost in a bout of frustration. "The Joker prides himself on the fact that he's unplanned, unpredictable."

"Even the plan-less have a plan," Alfred reassured him. "Knowing that someone is unpredictable is just about as good as knowing how they will react. In any scenario there's a limited number of possible decisions and outcomes."

"Well, what outcome do you think spinning a trailer over a pier and on to a steel reinforced speed boat was, number eight-thousand-fifty-six?" Lucius asked in a light hearted tone.

Alfred smiled back at him, defeated.

But, even if for a moment, Lucius had to consider if maybe there was an iota of truth in what the retired serviceman had said. "Now, let's just think about this for a second," he commanded, reaching out his hand to sooth the stressed young crime-fighter. "The Joker might be unpredictable, but I think we're all in agreement that based on the surveillance video we've seen on the news that he was realitively unprepared for the attack from these Lone Gunmen..." Lucius said and the three men turned to the monitor that was constantly scanning over a short piece of tape.

In it, one of the heavily armed gunmen lifted himself out of the roof, an unseen accomplice before handing him a rocket-launcher. He adjusted it for several seconds before lifting it up on his shoulder and firing. The camera did not catch the resulting destruction, though each of them had known that he'd missed his mark.

If he hadn't, he would have killed every police officer there, and left a gapping hole in the Gotham Expressway.

Bruce's eyes narrowed as he rewound the tape, watching with careful scrutiny at the gunmen's advanced weaponry. He watched it again, and again, and again. Finally, Lucius and Alfred turned to each other, the former nudging his swivel chair with the toe of his Italian leather shoe.

"That's the Joker's rocket-launcher..." he explained, but the two other men appeared confused.

"No it's not, the Joker has his in the back of the truck with him," Lucius rewound the tape to point it out from an earlier segment, but adamantly, Bruce shook his head.

Taping she screen several times after freezing it over the image of the SWAT clad gunman. He stretched his thumb and forefinger over the screen, causing it to zoom in on the particular section of the image. "No, it is the Joker's look..." Immediately, Bruce brought up the archive footage taken from the night Harvey Dent had been kidnapped by the Joker's thugs. The image froze over the Joker, holding the same rocket-launcher that now, nearly one year later, his enemies appeared to be using against him.

"That's a Norinco type 69" Alfred quipped and took off his wireframe glasses getting in close to the monitor for a detailed look. "Soviet made. I've seen a few of those in my day."

"Fairly common, aren't they?" Lucius asked, but the old butler shrugged his shoulders.

"Maybe during the second world war they were... But this doesn't exactly look like the newest model," he explained, "The scope on this model is not particularly good for distance militancy. Usually they're used for short range. You get to over two hundred meters, and your chance of interception falls by nearly fifty percent. That's probably why they missed."

"But are these common enough for two to be in the very same city?" Lucius had asked, but Bruce was hardly paying attention.

As the two men spoke, Bruce moved to the last of his unused monitors, sifting through his database to locate a different surveillance angle from the night just about a week ago now. Scanning through the tape at high speed, he brought the frames to a crawl as he saw the tumbler make a bee-line for the nearest exit. Soon after, the unmarked black van merged on to the highway, but he paid them little mind. Instead, he budged the frame to a large black man inside the Joker's truck, holding on to a different, newer model rocket-launcher.

"...They're different."

Lucius and Bruce were hawk-eyed as all three men stared unblinkingly at the screens before them. "I've never seen that model before..." came Bruce's whispered response.

Zooming in on the image, he pressed a command into the console which took a screen shot of the frame. The image moved from one monitor to the other, where it immediately began running the image of the weapon pictured through it's database. The computer ran through the list of names at the speed of light zooming in or particular features of the craft before narrowing down it's choices one by one, finally settling on a name confused .

"What?" he muttered as Lucius immediately tapped in the command for a print out.

"Somehow the Joker managed to get his hands on a piece of terrorist weaponry. A Yasin RPG... used by the Palestinian Islamic Fundamentalists on the Gaza Strip," Lucius explained. "He must have had it smuggled into the country."

Alfred wasn't concerned about that... in fact he hadn't been concerned with most anything the Joker did, since for the last few moments he stood calmly, one hand holding on the the handle of his tea cup, the other wrapped thoughtfully around his chin. The room sat quietly for a moment before all attention turned back to the contemplative gentleman.

"Forget about the Joker... He's got his owns wounds to lick for the time being. These guys, we have no idea who they are, where they come from and what they want. Now, we can either keep our focus on the Joker and end up being burned by these guys, or we can focus on them and deal with the Joker as he comes around," Alfred explained, pointing adamantly to the surveillance screen.

"What makes you think these guys are any more a threat than the Joker?" Lucius asked as Bruce crossed his arms over his chest.

"Yes, I think that having spent as much time as we have on the Joker has turned up to be a waste. He's obviously gone to great lengths to make sure that his identity, his whereabouts, his habits remain well hidden. Every lead you've pursued on his has ended up dead. Sometimes, just sometimes, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

Now Lucius was on to him. Sometimes, Alfred would suggest something so out of left field that Lucius didn't begin to understand until he retraced exactly how he'd come to it. "You're thinking these were the men who stole those weapons a few months back?"

"If you have to start somewhere, you might as well start with them. After all, they don't seem to have gone through too much trouble to cover up their tracks. Is it entirely possible that whoever robbed the major crimes unit sold all the weaponry themselves? Absolutely. But if you were a man, looking to wage war on the police, Batman, and the Joker too... and you just so happened to have an inside man..."

"...which isn't exactly hard to do in the MCU," Bruce said gesturing his hand at the possibility of a rat, seeing as the MCU had a habit of employing crooked cops.

"Then why not take the weapons for yourself to complete your own little army?" Alfred asked and Lucius nodded thoughtfully several times, his eyes shooting between the two men before settling on Bruce.

He was tired, but enthralled; that much he could see. The only thing he couldn't see was exactly where he fit into all of this. That was, until Bruce turned to him with a weak smile, placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him a reaffirming pat. "So, we know what I need to do, what are we gonna do about you?"

"Well, Mr. Wayne, I was hoping that you would tell me," he said, a little unsure of what he might have had in mind.

"Well, I've been feeling a bit low, and I was wondering if you'd be able to help me with that?" He asked, and as the three of them had turned to move back up the stairs, Bruce and Lucius shared a knowing smirk, leaving the darkness of the cave behind them.

* * *

At some point, he wasn't entirely sure when, the Joker had fallen asleep. He'd told himself he wouldn't, but here he was, his dark eyes fluttering open in the early morning light of the room. The television was still turned to the twenty-four hour news network, but volume was nearly all the way down, the muffled voice was the news anchor was almost enough to put him back to sleep.

The new bed had obviously been more comfortable than he was expecting, since it was rare for him to sleep without being at least somewhat conscious of it. Not once had he fought the urge to go downstairs and settle back on the couch as he'd been doing for months now. One minute he'd been awake and the next he'd been asleep. More than that though, he'd slept through the entire night without so much as stirring – that in itself was exceedingly rare.

The Joker had never slept well, never for more than a few hours at a time. As a child, problems with anxiety over trivial things had often kept him from a good night's sleep. In those hazy few moments after waking it was impossible to consider anything other than wanting to get back to sleep as quickly as possible. But, there was a brief instance where consciousness struck him, and he remembered exactly why it is he'd been here in the first place.

There was a warmth that crept up his left side and over his chest, it didn't cause him any great discomfort, no early morning sweats or numb limbs to speak of. It was a moment of dark surprise when he noticed it, and then glancing down, when a pang of horror struck his heart.

He'd never slept in the same bed with anyone – never woken up next to someone, never stayed the night at one of the few girls he'd been interested in during high-school. Memories were blurry to say the least, and if they weren't he certainly tried his best to make them so... and the Joker could not remember a time where someone laid in bed next to him. His eyes flashed open when he realized he'd fallen asleep next to her, and she hadn't appeared to mind one bit. In fact, her subconscious was so comfortable with the idea that she'd found her way right next to him, curled into the nook between his left arm and his torso.

There was a moment where he thought his his heart might have stopped beating. Not out of some soft heart-felt emotion, but something even rarer to the Joker than that.

Fear.

Only a few seconds after catching his breath that his heart was beating twice as fast to catch up to the beats it missed. It was as though he'd woken up next to a bear, thinking that any second she might come to and maul him like a salmon. He'd nearly plummeted off a building to his death, had countless weapons held to his head, and squared off with some of the baddest bad guys in Gotham City, but here, laying next to him, was this tiny little thing, and every hair on the back of his next stood up on end.

In just seconds, his sleep-filled eyes had widened, and he became overcome with the desperation of a trapped coyote; willing to gnaw off his own arm in an effort to get far, far, far away from where he had been laying.

But as the mind hopped from one mental scenario to the next, pleading so ardently to get out, the body found itself unwilling. So much so that his lethargy was a cause for concern. Mentally, his position was troubling to him, physically... well, that was a horse of a different color.

His fingertips grazed against the small portion of her back that was exposed between her shirt and pants. In the few times that he'd actually touched her, he'd never remarked on the condition of her skin, and yet his rushing, active mind screeched to a halt when he realized how smooth it was. The reaction had reminded him of a screaming child who is immediately distracted by some kind of shiny object – a hurricane silenced into a subtle breeze.

Now it was all he could think about. His free hand had moved to brush it's fingertips down the length of her exposed arm that had draped itself over his chest. From where he touched her a rash of goose bumps broke out over her flesh, causing her to stir; his fingertips retreating quickly at the idea of being caught.

_No good could possibly come from this... _he thought to himself, watching as Harley's subtle movements brought her even closer to him if that had been at all possible. The familiar scent of black licorice and baby powder filled his nostrils as a few strands of her bleached blond hair tickled against his stubbly cheek. He'd been this close to her before. She'd pinned him on the concrete floor of the warehouse not along ago, and the two of them had shared... so called intimate moments in the past. This was different – there was something, elemental, profound, and trusting about sharing a bed with someone, things that the Joker knew went against the grain of his character.

As logical as he could be, the idea of just being here with her like this brought up a list of contradictions in his head. He thought it best to leave, to avoid this kind of intimacy with her, but everywhere he turned, he was beginning to realize that it was becoming impossible to circumvent. Seeing the casual, everyday loveliness of her had been a nauseating part of his everyday life. But, it had been plan to see that it wasn't her affection, or genuine compassion for him that made him sick, but his complete lack of being able to process it.

_Whoa..._ he thought to himself, wide-eyed after coming to such a profound conclusion. Maybe a trickle of her therapy had come through to him after all.

Somewhere in between his debate between the running and the staying, he'd heard her steal a deep breath of air through her nose. He froze, watching her with unblinking eyes, thinking that at any moment she would stir back into consciousness and catch him in the guiltless act of laying there. Instead her legs stretched, she wriggled for a moment and then in an unexpected move, turned over onto her side and away from him, over to the other side of the bed, her back facing him.

Now, conflict again. Half of his mind heaved a sigh of relief, but the other had wrestled with the thought that maybe he'd wanted her to stay right where she had been. As much as he wanted to remain in his solitary state, he would have been lying to himself if he'd bought into it.

Old habits die hard, and the Joker could hardly face the idea of taking the initiative of curling up next to her, but the image in his head tasted so strongly of weakness that the only thing he could do was throw his legs over the side of the bed, stand up and hastily make his way down the stairs toward the coffee machine.


	53. Chapter 53: Nest

_**Authors Note: Hey guys, please take a look at my profile for some awesome news! I don't want to leave a whole big note right here, but if you could check it out, I would really appreciate it. It's an idea that I had a while ago that I never got to do, and I think we can all have a lot of fun with it. Thanks!**_

The police fanned out through Gotham's underbelly in the days following the Joker's raid of the Creemore building. Their numbers soon thinned out like a herd of starving water buffalo; there was nothing for them there. Regardless, the Joker had sat above his kingdom, keeping a watchful eye. He was a man of suspicion, wary of everything, and always had at least one or two carefully crafted theories up his sleeve.

On a particularly calm night, weeks after the two of them had left themselves enough time to mend, the Joker and Harley started off on their errand..

Sitting in silence, Harley watched as the sun dipped behind a grey cloud, casting the streets into a cool summer evening. She could always appreciate a cloudy day – green always seemed ripest when you didn't have the white of the sun to distract you.

Lush trees lined the street Harley had grown up on. She remembered having watched them grow, watched when their roots buckled and turned up the sidewalk, transforming the quiet, rustic neighborhood into an obstacle course that only local children could master. She would ride her red Schwinn up and down the street several times a day, watching the old lady down the block walk her five Pomeranian dogs, or chuckling to herself as the spinster neighbor across the street threw out yet another cheating boyfriend.

On the surface Harley's childhood must have seemed perfect to someone like the Joker. In reality, so much lingered beneath the surface that she found it difficult to believe that anyone could quite understand. What looked like the perfect suburban lifestyle ended up being twisted and wrought with pain. Harley had stood by and watched as her mother lost her husband to a life of crime, and then a son to mental illness.

How could Harley tell her she was about to lose her daughter, too?

"You don't have to do this," the Joker told her quietly as he parked the car at the end of the block. "Sooner or later she's going to get the picture." He inspected the length of the street carefully out the passenger side window, silently relieved at the lack of police guard.

The end of her platinum blonde ponytail dusted her shoulders as she turned from looking out the window and back to him. He didn't look at her, but he took his hand off the shifter and glanced down the empty block. "No, I have to. Even if just to tell her goodbye," Harley said, and looked down at her hands, where he'd suddenly placed a very sharp folding knife.

"Fine, then it's exactly like I told you. Alongside the back of the house you're going to find a small box with cables running from it and into the ground. They'll be covered in black PVC pipe. Use the knife to split it open. Wrap the blade around a white coated wire and fold the knife closed. Should cut the cable cleanly."

Harley nodded diligently throughout his instructions, sure to hang on every word. "Black PVC, cut the white cable...got it," she recited, carefully pressing the knife's safety latch to the side before prying it open to inspect the blade.

He nodded again and then at once became very stern, pointing at her with a rigid finger. "Now, listen to me, alright? You have fifteen minutes. Any more than that and I'm leaving without you."

"Yeah, I get it!" she told him in a huff, looking up from the knife to shoot him a cutting glare. "I told you that you didn't have to come. I could have put on a pair of sunglasses, taken a bus home and no one would have suspected a damned thing."

Harley was probably right. Unless the police planned on questioning every platinum blond in town, there was no way they were going to find her in a city of thirty-million people. Obviously, though, being nonchalant about this wayside adventure was not the attitude the Joker wanted her to have. Firmly, he grabbed her by the arm and gave her a tug. "Before I'm in the business of choas, or crime, I'm in the business of keeping secrets. The minute someone suspects something is the minute somebody gets caught. You might think this is nothing more than a _little_ trip to Grandma's house, but this whole city is full of wolves," he whispered to her, motioning over the street with his free hand.

"Paranoid much?" she asked, squirming as he released her from his grip.

"You're not paranoid enough. For all you know they could be using your mother as some emotional _ploy_ to get you to rush home. These cops fight dirty," he grunted, as he glared at the steering wheel.

She raised a brow to him skeptically. "Oh you think so, huh?"

The Joker turned away from her, placing both hands firmly on the wheel. "I know so," he growled. It was a pretty strange pill for her to swallow – that the Joker believed himself to be of higher moral accord than the police, but then, who could say anything about the cops in this city? After all, Harley knew the '_Parable of Harvey Dent_', as the Joker would call it.

"Go on, hurry up," he said quietly, motioning for her to leave. "Fifteen minutes, go."

Rolling her eyes, she pulled the handle on the door interior, moving to push it open before she heard an ear-splitting honk, and watched as a car had to swerve to avoid hitting the passenger door of the Tahoe. Gasping Harley pulled the door closed, a look of panic on her face as an angry fist shook out of the passing car's driver-side.

The Joker had ducked himself down in his seat to avoid being seen through the windshield, and shot Harley an annoyed grimace. She knelt on her seat, offering him a very large, innocent, stupefied grin.

A nervous laugh escaped her as she tried to wave off the the tension she had just caused. "Aw, c'mon now you're making me nervous," she told him through clenched teeth.

"Would you get out of here?" the Joker hollered, his limbs seeming to explode from the drivers seat, flailing furiously in every direction. His violent outburst sent Harley running from the vehicle and toward the gap that separated the backyards of two lanes of brownstone houses.

She counted two by two as she made her way down the narrow corridor lined by the wooden planks of backyard fences, graffiti coating their panels in the gang symbols of local neighborhood punks, or the initials of long-lost lovers. The grey sky left Harley with the feeling that she was slowly descending back in time. By the time she had reached her old family home, she felt like no more than a lost teenager. The backyard was still filled with crabapple trees. A porch swing, rusted with age, leaned its broken frame against the brick wall of the house. As she peered through the lattice fence, she took a deep breath, and after making sure her mother was not placed in front one of the furnished windows, she lifted herself up over the top, as easily as if she'd been stepping over a curb.

Soundlessly, she fell to her feet, moving smoothly across the backyard. Her eyes scanned the back windows as she made a bee-line for the coated plastic pipe the Joker had directed her toward. Folding open the knife once more, she sliced through it as easily as butter before separating the white wire. Wrapping the blade around it, she folded it closed, sheering the wire cleanly.

Glancing up, Harley's eyes climbed over the bricks of the house, endless memories locked into the burnt umber between the mortar. Pain held this place together in my mind, wrapped it in chains, and left it to grow old, covered in reeds and ivy. There was not one inch of her that wanted to venture back inside. In fact, Harley could honestly remember the first breath she'd taken once she'd left this place – it felt to be the first time she'd tasted fresh air in a very long time.

Cautiously now, and feeling ever so much like a child, she ascended the first steps to the back door, pulling open the screen and reaching to turn the handle just beyond it.

Before she could even wrap her hand around it, she heard the bolt come unlocked, and watched as it flew open in front of her.

Harley's mother, being quite a few inches shorter than her, looked up with a set of large dark eyes, tears clinging to the cusp of her bottom lids. Silently, she scanned Harley's face for some kind, _any_ kind of recognition. Then without any warning, she reached up and placed both hands on the side of Harley's face before she began sobbing uncontrollably.

Guilt came down on her heavy and hard like a hammer, beating her into the ground. She had to push it aside. She didn't have a lot of time.

"I'm so glad you're back..." Francine had managed to choke in between sobs, catching her breath in short gasps.

Drawing her sleeves over her hands, Harley smiled at her as she gently dotted the tears from her face. Inhaling deeply, and drawing hard on any kind of courage she had left, she hunched herself down to look her mother in the face.

"I'm not coming back," she said in the most finite, direct voice she could muster. "Not now. Not ever..."

Just when Francine looked like she might crumble into a million tiny pieces, Harley took a hard grip of her shoulders. "I don't have a lot of time, and I need to make you understand. You can do whatever you want to _'lose it'_ after that... but I need you to hold it together so that I can make you understand."

To see the two of them like this, it might have been difficult to determine which of the two had been the parent. Francine's lip quivered uncontrollably, but did her best to nod, and put on a brave face as the two of them stood in the kitchen. Releasing her, Harley moved around the house, quick to draw the shades over all the windows, her mother slowly following after her. "Wha... what are you doing?" she'd asked with a tiny voice, but Harley shot her a look for asking what might have been the silliest question she ever heard.

"Mother, are you kidding? I've got half the damn city looking for me, and the Joker sitting outside in a car. Are you really asking me why I'm closing all the blinds?" she questioned, furious as she finally came to the front family room, snapping the shades down.

"He's outside?" Francine asked, rushing to lift the receiver of the phone.

Harley watched as she hit the hook several times, offering only a smirk once her mother had drawn the lines. "Harley are you out of your mind?" she asked in a hushed tone, placing the receiver back down. "He's a madman! He's manipulating you into doing whatever it is that he wants. You could die and he wouldn't shed a tear over you!"

"He didn't want to come here. In fact, I begged him to let me come, and he complied. Does that sound like someone who's manipulating me?" she asked, scoffing as she stretched her arms into an exaggerated shrug. "Truth be told mother, not much of this was his fault. He asked me once to come with him, but I did it on my own accord."

"You _are _out of your mind! Do you have any idea how many people tried to convince me of that? I wouldn't let them." Here, Harley just rolled her eyes, as her mother's thick Queens accent made her difficult to understand when she began talking so quickly. "I mean H_aar_ley, you killed th_iir_teen people! How on E_aar_th is that supposed to make me feel? I mean, first my husband..."

"Mom..."

"Then Danny, now you..."

"Mom..."

"People are gonna start thinking _I'm _the lunatic, ending up with a gonzo family like this one."

"_MOM_!" Harley screamed, balling her hands into tiny fists at her sides, the hair on the back of her neck standing up. "You _are_ out of your god-damned mind! But that's not why I'm here," she said, taking a deep breath as she tried to settle her nerves down enough to actually ask what she'd come here to ask. "I'm here... because I need to know something. If I continue what I'm doing, I need to know something... because then I'm gonna know where I get it from, and that's the bit that's killing me right now."

Her mother had gone straight-faced, watching Harley for several seconds, a deep silence passing between the two. This might have been what Harley had been dreading all this time, knowing the truth about her own lineage taking roots in compassion.

After a few more seconds, a frustrated Francine raised her arms into a large shrug. "Well?"

_How unceremonious..._ Harley thought to herself and took a deep breath as she gestured to her mother's left hand, her slightly tarnished wedding band still sitting on her ring finger.

"Do you still love my father?" she asked, silence swooping back in to their already awkward conversation.

While Francine crossed her arms in response, Harley immediately went into therapist mode; reading into all the subtle details of her body language. Her tiny hips jutted out to the side, suggested frustration. The way her tongue slid over her top molars hinted at her unwillingness to answer Harley's question.

Stepping forward to take a gentle hold of her shoulders, Harley's impenetrable eyes pierced her mother, desperate to know if what the Joker had suggested to her all that time ago had been true. "Mom..." she began, her despondent tone evident in that one word, "I need to know... please."

After a few seconds, and a large sigh, her mother glanced down and to the right. A psychologist would have immediately recognized it as a moment of reminiscence, but to her daughter, it was wrought with sadness.

Arms falling to her side, Francine offered only a weak shrug. "I...oh, I don't know, Harley. Sometimes I think about divorce. He's been on death row for fifteen years. Appeal after appeal. I know one day that serving him with papers won't matter..." She bit down on her lips, chin quivering with emotion. She gasped for another deep breath. "Oh, but then I realize that leaving him won't make it any better when they finally pull the trigger on him. I love'im..." she confessed, "but I don't think I could ever forgive him for all the time he stole from us."

The two of them shared a glance that was very much the same from both parties. Harley knew in her heart that her mother was filled with confusion and pain, because it was the same confusion and the same pain that she struggled with.

It didn't take long for her mother to launch herself into another tirade, though. "Harley, this man is different though!"

_Here we go... _she thought to herself as she released her mother's shoulders and turned her back on her.

"He's a lunatic! Stringing reporters up by the ankles? Killing for the sake of some, some black-hearted _joke_?" she asked, gesturing wildly with her hands.

"You wouldn't think that way if you understood how his mind works, or what his ideas are," she tried to reason.

"Harley, you don't understand how he thinks! He's tricked you into believing you do because..."

"No, Mother... that's not how it works with us. Half the time he keeps me from the danger that surrounds him." Well, that was half true. It wasn't until recently that the Joker had pulled a different set of cards when it came to Harley's well being.

"He will not think twice about killing you or having you killed if it means he will live another day!"

Balling her fists once more, Harley could feel her heartbeat pounding in her ears, a lump of aggression forming in her throat. Was this why the Joker had let her come, knowing that her own mother would infuriate her to the point where she would dream of strangling her? "I volunteered for this job! In the end he had no say over what I chose to do."

"I thought I raised you with more sense than this. You've never run headlong into danger once in your entire life. How could you do this now for a man who doesn't give a shit..."

"_Because I love him_, god damn it all!" Harley screeched so loudly that she was sure that even the Joker, parked all the way down the street could hear her.

Everything froze in the room for what felt like an eternity before both of Harley's hands clasped over her mouth to restrict her from saying anything more, her eyes shined like wide, sparkling flying saucers.

Struggling to inhale through her nose, her hands peeled themselves away from her lips, shaking back in forth in adamant denial. "No, no... I didn't know what I was saying," she insisted, trying desperately to laugh off her little gaffe, but it was no use. The moment it had come from her mouth, her mother's expression fell, softened by the words that so many women wait their entire lives to hear with such sincerity.

Francine gingerly took hold of those hands of incessant denial and pulled them down, watching as Harley struggled to keep her head from shaking left and right, her heart screaming to make itself clear. "No, Mom... I didn't know what I was saying."

"Yes you did..." she answered, which just caused Harley's head to continuing shaking stubbornly.

"No, no I didn't." There was so much finality in her voice, and every time she said it, her heart ached a little more. Harley wondered who she was trying to convince with all her conviction: her mother, or herself.

Loving the Joker was such a precarious thing. At once she knew that it would never be returned, but it couldn't stop her from trying to illicit some kind of reaction out from him. Harley had been trying all this time to make him recognize that love had been so closely connected to all of her deeds. She'd given him everything, every little action, every risk she took, even the uniform she had adopted. Since she'd met him, and somewhere along the line, she'd made a subconscious decision to devote herself to him. Maybe the truly crazy thing was that, she'd done it without him even having to ask.

Perhaps it had been manipulation, but then... maybe that was true of every relationship.

With her hands tucked so weakly within her mother's, Harley's eyes looked over her face tearfully, and a very similar set of eyes looked back. But from behind all the pain Harley knew she must have been feeling, she could see her mother's pride – the last thing she expected to see on his particular visit.

"Listen to your mother now, because this might be the most important thing she ever tells you," Francine said softly. She had a tendency to refer to herself in the third person when she was about to say something poignant. "The heart wants what it wants. It does not relent. It can't be stopped and it shouldn't be..."

There was a long pause during which her mother placed her hands on the side of Harley's face. She felt like a horse with the blinders on, the sight of her mother consumed her entire field of vision. "I would have gone to the end of the world for your father, but I knew that out of all of us it was going to be you who made something of yourself. I couldn't just leave you and go on a crusade for him... but I _would_ have, and I think that's the part that _truly_ matters."

Harley's cheek pressed into her mother's palm as the two of them shared a weak smile. "Well, I suppose the apple doesn't fall all to far from the tree, huh?" Francine asked, both of them chuckling softly before Harley sniffled through an audible sob. Suddenly, she wrapped her arms around her daughter, "I can't agree with what you've done... but I _can_ agree with why you did it. Love is worth everything, Harley."

Pulling away from her, Francine took a deep breath, a couple tears having made their way down the sides of her cheeks. "You're a smart girl... I know you have your reasons for doing things," she said, a twinge of sadness still hanging in her voice.

Glancing at the clock, Harley then turned to look out the window. Pushing aside the white taffeta curtain, she watched as the Joker's black Tahoe drove toward them, stopping a couple houses down. "Would you believe me if I told you that this was all a part of therapy?" she asked with a mysterious little smile, walking past her mother and toward the front door.

"Harley, wait!" Francine called out, and with her hand on the doorknob, Harley's blue eyes turned up to regard her almost cheerfully. "I won't see you again, will I?"

Chuckling, Harley only shrugged. "There's no certainty in anything I do anymore, mother," she explained and turned the handle to the world outside. It was dark now, and one by one the streetlights came on over the quiet street, glowing an iridescent orange, casting the trees into an odd shade of brown. Stepping out onto the stoop of the old brownstone, she turned back to regard her mother again, "I can't say yes, and I can't say no... maybe one day I'll see you again."

Weakly, Francine pulled her sweater a little tighter around her as she stepped out into the fresh summer night air, the breeze tossing her dark curly hair over her shoulder. Glancing past her daughter and across the street, she saw the dark truck, sitting there, waiting for her in the darkness, its high-beams hiding the occupants within.

"Is that him?" she asked, gesturing toward the SUV.

Harley smiled and nodded, prancing down the house's cement stairs to the sidewalk below. "Yeah, he told me he was going to leave if I was any longer than fifteen minutes..."

"All men say that, whether they're insane or not... they always wait," Francine explained with the kind of wisdom that only a woman wise to the way of men could truly point out.

Harley shook her head as she gazed at the impatiently waiting vehicle. "Oh, I don't know about him though. I'm kind of surprised he's still here."

"No, sweetheart, they always wait. They wait because they know that as soon as you end up finding your way home that you're going to kill'em." The two of them shared a knowing chuckle, before Harley took a deep breath.

Knowing that you were about to walk away from your mother with the possibility of never seeing her again... that was a tough pill to swallow. There's some unseen rope that tethers mothers and their daughters together. The inevitability of life is that at one point or another, through death or extreme circumstance, that tether will snap leaving both to fend for themselves in an unknown world.

Although they were only a few feet away from each other, Harley could feel that rope pull and heave under the tension placed on it now. Regardless, it didn't stop her from turning to glance at her one more time. "Mom, I'm so sorry..." she whispered, but before Francine could say anything in reply, Harley had taken off across the street.

The driver's door opened as she hopped over the curb to greet him. Francine could see the excitement in her daughter's face, hear the happiness in her voice as he stepped out of the truck to talk to her. She'd seen him in photographs, or television. Now he was right here, no more than a hundred feet away, and without the crazy costume, or the dramatic make-up, he appeared to be nothing more than a man with a jagged scar.

The two of them shared a few words, and it wasn't more than a couple seconds later that Harley had hopped into the back seat of the truck. He'd grunted with frustration and turned to get into the car himself. He stopped at some point and watched as Francine sat on the stoop, her cardigan sweater held tight under her crossed arms as she watched the truck from under the white porch light. The Joker froze, looking across the street, over the roof of the Tahoe as he stood with both feet on the truck's entrance step.

The two of them shared a glance that went on for a few seconds. From across the street, not knowing what else to do other than stare, Francine raised her hand in a very nonchalant, haphazard way.

The Joker, from where his silhouette stood in the shadow of some orange streetlight, raised his own hand in very much the same way.

Between them, some tacit or understood feeling of camaraderie – a passing of a torch. There was a few seconds of hesitation, then he slid into the driver's seat, started the engine, and transported her daughter back into the Gotham City night.

The truck disappeared into the darkness.

The tether snapped.


	54. Chapter 54: Mole

Joe Callaghan loved stepping out into the cool breeze so late at night. Emerging from a long day at work, the immovable greyness of the sky unleashed its fury while he sat at his desk, and by the time he'd made his way outside for the first time in over twelve hours, the entire city had been given a good rinse. Gotham City was always transformed after a good long rain. The air was always fresher, the rain having trapped the wayward city pollutants, pulling them to the ground and out to the harbor.

He'd left the office with a feeling of accomplishment, though numbering a catalog of those moments might have proved a difficult task. So much had become his responsibility that it was easy to get lost in the shuffle. Joe had never thought himself the kind of man to hold his breath, hiding behind a stack of files and hoping that superiors would simply leave him to his work. Luckily for him, the only superior he was reporting to was Jim Gordon, and he was too tied up to care about what he might have been up to.

At the end of the week, he'd meet with Jim, tell him about a couple leads he'd exhausted, and look stressed and disappointed. Afterward, the Commissioner would give him one more pat on the head.

So far, so good.

But now, treading down toward an adjacent alleyway, Joe thought about how strangely quiet the city was after the rainstorm. He could hear the hollow echo of his shoes against the polished concrete as he made their way through the narrow streets. Anyone would be easily left with the distinct feeling of eyes on them in the orange light cast from the streetlamps. Going through an alleyway at this point in the evening was not for the faint of heart. It was enough to make anyone more than a bit skittish - everyone except Joe.

Joe exuded the kind of arrogance that only comes from being handed respect too early on in life. He believed himself to be just _that _good, and others around him felt obliged to believe the same. His senses, acute; his gun, constantly at the ready; there wasn't a single thing out there on this cool summer night that could make him quiver in his boots.

Save for maybe one man.

A loud _swoosh_ came out of nowhere, before Joe could even take a breath. He felt himself enveloped in a dark black shroud, only to feel water droplets seep through his dress shirt as his back was slammed against a car door. He was taken aback, and for the moment had the wind knocked out of him before he locked eyes with the assailant, who was not really an assailant at all, but the darkly-shrouded vigilante who had once been Gotham's Crusader.

Immediately he reached for his gun, but before he could even feel the steel of it in the palm of his hand, he felt his wrist belt back on a strange angle. Pain shot up his arm so fast, that he nearly buckled at the knee. He didn't come crashing to the ground, that that oh-so-practiced confidence did.

"Tell me what you know about the SWAT team," Batman's gruff, monotonic voice demanded.

Joe himself rolled his head backwards, his eyes rolling at the pain. "The- the GCPD SWAT team...? What do you want with them?" he asked in a desperate tone, trying hard not to struggle in an effort to avoid injuring himself in the man's grip.

"No," he growled. "The SWAT team terrorizing the police. The ones responsible for the death of Brutus Carpozo..."

"I... I don't know anything about them!" he cried, and suddenly, Batman released him, removing his weapon from his holster before he took another opportunity to grab for it.

He appeared unimpressed as he brooded around the young detective, who now held his wrist gingerly, cowering as he looked over the hulking onyx structure that loomed over him. "Lies..." he said in disgust. "Every piece of police information on the SWAT team comes back to you, and you're telling me you don't know a thing about them? They're implicated on three different cases, two of which you're the lead detective on, and working on the other as the second."

"We know they're involved somehow, b-b-b-but they're so elusive we don't have the opportunity to get any information on them," Joe admitted, trying his best to plead his case with the only judge in Gotham who seemed to get anything done. "The only other time they've been out in public was during the pursuit of the Joker just a few weeks ago, and we both know how disorganized everything turned out to be that night."

"Because whatever cards you're holding, the Joker's got the ace. He's proven to the cops that he's always a step ahead," Batman spoke, seemingly almost impatient as he closely inspected the young detective who was now taking the time to straighten his white vest. While he hated to admit it, the Joker operated on a level of strategy that the police could only dream for.

For now, Joe was treading frantically to keep his ego above the water. "Yeah well," he started, nose in the air, dusting off his left shoulder. "If they're just going to end up attacking each other, why not let the Joker go after the SWAT team himself? Maybe if we're lucky they'll just end up destroying one another."

Patience was not typically one of Batman's virtues, particularly where insolence was involved.

Taking Callaghan by the scruff of the neck and lifting his short frame to the tips of his toes, Batman roared down into his face with so much ferocity that his eyes winced with pain at the booming in his ears. "Justice! That's your _only_ job, and you can't even live up to its standards!" he hollered, Joe's glazed eyes staring up at him in terror. "I'll never know how you climbed the ladder so fast, but right now that's the biggest injustice that I can see."

"I don't know anything..." he choked, and Batman's mighty gloved hand released him again. This time, he did drop to the ground, his confidence securely buried six feet under it. "The...the case involving the guns stolen from the MCU is about to go cold. Most of those pieces were untraceable. They've probably been dispersed through the same crime circles they came from." Coughing lightly to clear his throat, he pulled himself back up to his feet, threads of his dark hair giving him more of a sinister look as they pushed forward on his face. "As for the 'bank heist homicides'... the only evidence left on the scene were bullet casings that. They matched the stolen guns, but it doesn't really matter, since we can't assume the SWAT team has all of the stolen guns in their possession, or if they were even the ones to steal them from the MCU in the first place!"

His frustration was understandable. These three cases were so interlocked that once they solved one, they'd have them all solved. But Batman wasn't convinced. "I find it hard to believe that a man like you, who's been handed so much opportunity, is shuffling his feet to solve these cases," he explained. "You'd be deemed a hero by your peers. You'd be well on your way to making Commissioner one day."

"You can't have a table with just three legs. I'm working on it, but things can only stay in my control so long," Joe muttered, and once Batman had turned his back to him, Joe could see his gun spin out from under the cape that trailed behind him.

"It's in your best interest to keep this a priority, unless you'd like me to pay you another visit," he threatened, "I'll be keeping a close eye on you."

Joe scrambled to pick up his weapon, pulling back the hammer and aiming it into the darkness of the alley, but it was too late. Like a shadow, he'd disappeared into the night.

A scowl hardened itself on Joe's face as he holstered his weapon and straightened the sleeves of his dress-shirt. Receiving threats from Batman hadn't been in his job description, and he'd be damned if he didn't plan on telling Jim Gordon about their little altercation. Now all he could do was stuff his hands into his pockets and make his way through the alley, toward a road that ran parallel to his police department.

From behind him the growing lights of a slow-moving vehicle passed by.

* * *

There was a loud crash as the doors to Arkham Asylum flew open. A group of armed men fluttered inside, and moved with militaristic precision as they kicked open doors, aiming the scopes of their assault rifles about the empty rooms. Within a few seconds several of them had stormed the nurses' station where they ordered the hired personnel laying face-down on the floor with the hands folded over their heads.

At first the nurses had been caught off guard, though not frightened; upon first glance these looked like none-other than the Gotham City SWAT team. It didn't take them very long to recognize that it wasn't. The gear was the same, but there were no badges, no identification tags, just black opaque visors pulled over their faces.

The men spoke in low voices as they ordered the doctors, nurses, and orderlies to the floor. One of the men carefully stepping beyond them and switching off the controls to the main switchboard, effectively cutting the lines on communication to the outside world. The head nurse's station was packed full of the midnight staff, who'd come to investigate the dramatic entrance. Their shivering bodies quilted the floor like some Holocaust gas chamber, each of them sharing terrified, fleeting glances with one another.

As two men stood guard, several others clamored up the steps and toward the executive offices of the doctors and directors that called Arkham home. Long corridors filled with doors were inspected by the swarm of armored riflemen, each door kicked in and scanned for anything that might have aroused suspicion. The lights of their scopes buzzed about the rooms, as if the offices had turned into some lively disco. In actuality, they were homing themselves in on something, circling like buzzards, waiting to land their furtive eyes on their what they'd sniffed out.

Finally, reaching the group of them reach what they have been seeking. A room, filled with filing cabinets, its walls lined with mahogany bookshelves, a large bloodstain on the floor. This place had once been the office of Jeremiah Arkham, now, it had been exorcised of all its ghosts and used for storage. Such a fall from grace, for what might have been one of the most respected offices in all of Gotham City.

Each drawer had been sealed with a large evidence sticker. The words 'WARNING! EVIDENCE SEAL!' were clearly printed on each red label. These men held a blatant disregard for anything that might have had something to do with official procedure. They ripped the drawers open, quickly leafing through the files within, most of them simply throwing them around to create a scene. However, one man in particular raised his visor, his index finger counting down the cabinets before finally making his way to the letter 'Q'.

His gloved hand ripped the drawer open. There were only a few files inside, one of which held precedence over the rest. It was hard, to say the least - very wide, packed full of information, personality tests, and medical records. Ripping it from it's resting place, the SWAT officer flipped through it's numerous pages, everything appearing to be in order. With a satisfied smirk, he lowered the blackened visor over his face once more.

"Movin' out!" the officer called to the rest of them, who immediately fell back into formation, carrying themselves single file out into the corridor and back towards the nurses station. The room behind them was left in such disarray that there would be no way anyone could discover what they had taken without auditing each and every file.

Rejoining their comrades who stood vigilantly at the nurse's station, all of the men swept out as silently and as organized as they had come. Their feet pattered quietly along the stone tile and out the front double doors, which closed behind them with a simple click.

The soles of their steel-toed Doc Martins' bounced down the crackling cement stairs of the asylum, where a large black van lay in wait. They'd flown in and out completely under the radar. This was impressive...

...especially to Bosco, who sat ducked down in his car, headlights off, large dark eyes perched just atop the steering wheel. He watched as one of them carried only one object before moving into the back of the van. The back doors closed in unison, and the brake lights illuminated Bosco's face into a strange shade of orange before they began driving away.

Not one siren could be heard, not one screaming police light, not one flash of authority, save of course for the authority that they had rushed in with. They'd come with a distinct purpose and had intimidated everyone inside into submission, without hitting any resistance. This was something to write home about, which was exactly what Bosco planned on doing, once he tailed them to wherever they were taking the goods.

This was shaping up to be quite the hunch. The Joker might have hit the nail on the head.


	55. Chapter 55: Faith

**[NOTE: I'll be honest, I haven't been writing. A few weeks ago, I convinced myself that I would never forgive myself if I didn't finish this story. I had a few people send me emails, one even offering money to finish. Obviously, I turned it down, but it made me realize that I wasn't the only one who invested in this story, the rest of you have too, and it's not fair of me to stop, especially since I have so much planned. I'll be writing more often, and I promise you all, you'll see another chapter very soon. I'd love to get some reviews. I feel old and rusty, so please let me know how I'm doing.]**

Jim couldn't sleep.

There he lay, on his back, the stress weighing on his chest like he'd been shot with a cannonball. The last time he'd felt this way had been the days leading up to the Joker's capture. The weight he was expecting to be lifted only sat heavier, taunting him into waking life, the stillness of the room only further stirring his anxiety.

In his heart of hearts, Jim knew that all relationships were based on trust; personal and work alike. Jim could never sleep when he had no trust, and the last time he couldn't trust someone, the entire GCPD nearly paid the ultimate price for it. Now it seemed like it was only a matter of time until he was the one covering the bill.

Slowly, he turned his head to Barbara, who regardless of how he slept always managed to find herself curled up next to him. His face softened at the sight of her sleeping face, like a child without a single worry in all the world. _That_ was trust. For all he was worth, he was going to make sure that if anything or anyone could keep him sleeping at night, it was her.

Just as he'd decided that Barbara was enough, Jim heard a cell phone ring, but it was not the one he kept at his bedside. It was a distant ringing, and it took a few disoriented seconds before he realized that it was coming from a phone he'd left inside his coat pocket.

He knew exactly what it was.

Launching himself out of bed, he roused poor Barbara from her slumber. "Jim?" she called out to him in a dull grumble.

He didn't answer her, racing out of the bedroom as fast as his stiff legs could carry him. He waddled to the cook rack by the front door, immediately fishing through his pockets for the flat red phone that had been given to him so long ago. "Hello? Hello?" he asked frantically into the phone, as if afraid he might have missed the call.

There was a moment of silence, and then, on the other end of the line, the sound of rustling wind could be heard brushing past the mouthpiece. "You and I need to talk," came the gruff voice.

Jim had known who was calling before he'd even picked up the phone. That was the beauty of having a dedicated line, though Jim hardly considered the two of them close enough to exchange these 'middle-of-the-night' phone calls. Silently he wondered what kind of questions Barbara would have for him after this stunt.

"Now?" Jim asked, with a twang of disapproval in his voice, his free hand lifting the squeeze the bridge of his nose where his glasses usually sat.

Another few seconds of silence. "Get to the roof of your building, I'll be waiting for you there." Batman left no room for protest as he hung up the line, which forced the Commissioner to offer a large sigh and gaze at the square screen of the Blackberry as it went dark. His attention turned away from it as he heard Barbara's slippered feet shuffle into the hallway.

"Late night phone calls usually have you running out the door. What's different about this time?" she asked, but Jim didn't really know what to say. Considering their past, it was difficult to relay any information about Batman to Barbara. She thought he caused more trouble than he was worth, even if he'd become a particularly important informant to Jim over the years.

Sometimes he wondered if she'd been happier when he was a beat cop.

His few seconds of silence told her all that she needed to know, and then Jim was sliding on his coat and walking past Barbara and back into the bedroom she'd just come from. "Jim, no!" she protested, reaching out to take ahold of his arm when he strode past.

It was no use. With one of his legs already out the window and on the fire escape, he turned to gaze back at her sharply. "What do you want me to do, Barbara?" he asked with a heavy shrug, his accent more apparent in his aggravated tone. "How about I just call him back and tell him to fuck off, huh?"

"Jim..." she whispered, half in shock – he rarely used profanity – and half in apology. She pulled her housecoat closed, the cool wind from outside rushed through the open window that Jim was pulling himself out of.

Bending over, he peered back inside at her, his patience wearing thin. "I won't be more than a few minutes. Go back to sleep." Without another thought he began making his way up the fire escape. The rusted metal was swaying slightly in the crisp night air. Quickly weaving himself up the floors one by one, it wasn't long before he was high enough to glance over the edge of the roof. His dark hair whipped around in the wind as he buttoned his peacoat over his pyjama pants.

There he was, that statuesque figure that stood ever vigilant in the Gotham night. Jim knew that half of Batman's success relied on police cooperation, and if either of them was going to be successful, then Jim had to act like he wasn't entirely hating every minute of this. Sighing, he pulled himself up onto the roof, not taking his eyes off him for a minute. He almost wondered if the sight of his was more mirage than reality; the way he stood there perfectly still, his cape ruffling vigorously through the air. Jim was just thankful that he'd actually announced himself this time, instead of frightening the bejesus out of him.

"You pull me out of bed for something legitimate, or are you looking for another one of our heart to heart chats?" Jim asked sarcastically, hugging his coat into his chest tightly with a firm pair of crossed arms.

For a moment, there was nothing and Jim started to believe that maybe he _was_ looking at a statue. However, Batman had a gift for taking his time to word things in such a way that they often had dual meanings. This time was no different. "I want to know how much you've invested into Joesph Callaghan," came an order, more than a simple question.

Jim shot him a glance, feeling that somehow he was being questioned on the legitimacy of his intuition. He didn't like it. "I don't know if you could tell, but I'm up to my ass in alligators right now. I don't need you banging on my door in the middle of the night unless you're going to give me something I need," Jim told him sternly, his hand slicing through the air like a Ginsu.

"I am giving you something you need: a warning," Batman told the Commissioner in a deep, cautionary mummer. It was enough garner Jim's full attention, because he crossed his arms over his chest once again, appearing to listen as he tightened his overcoat around him, his plaid pyjama pants flapping in the bitter cold gust.

With his firm steps crunching the rooftop gravel, Batman came a little closer to the Commissioner, so as not to raise his voice over the howling wind. "Joe Callaghan has a hand in nearly every major case in the MCU right now, but did you ever think of why he's volunteered to take on so much responsibility?" he asked, prompting Jim's curiosity in hopes that he'd find his own way to the revelation.

Unfortunately, something got in the way of Jim's typically crystal clear vision, which one could only assume was a newly acquired, and ill-mannered, sense of pride.

"He knows he's on the fast track to making detective. Sadly, for the rest of us, we can't just don a mask and save the city. Some of us have to pay our dues first," Jim explained in a sarcastic kind of way... one that would make anyone suspect that questioning their better judgement was not sticking well.

Batman ignored his sarcasm. "What I'm telling you is that you don't have to look very hard to see that Joe's hard work is a rouse for something else. Everyone in the MCU insists that he's the wonder-child of the force... but how many dead-ends will he have to follow up on before you finally notice that he's not bringing you any closer to the Joker, or Dr. Quinzel, or the SWAT team?"

Shrugging heavily, Jim let his arms fall by his sides, turning around to pace out his exasperation. "What does he have to gain by letting the cases go cold? It'll make him look like a failure. He'll never make detective if it doesn't gain any legitimate leads!" he exclaimed, spinning back around to point a finger at Batman's dark, looming form. "There isn't a damn cop in this city who doesn't want the SWAT team, or the Joker, or God-damned Harley for that matter. You should be focused on them, and you have your nose buried in _Joe Callaghan's_ book? The kid's a nobody, and until you've got anything that proves otherwise, that's all the kid is gonna be: a boring, old, book. What do you have on him that makes you so damn interested?"

"Not a lot," Batman said, "besides his unrelenting ambition, and the fact that he's got you, and the head of nearly every other department eating out of the palm of his hand. He's holding too many cards, and the stakes are too high."

Jim's eyebrows arched high on his wrinkled forehead. A few moments went by where the two men stood on the rooftop, their sorrows and worries swirling around them like the cast of the bitter night wind. They'd worked so harmoniously together in the past, and now the two of them were butting heads, defending their own honour like two wild prairie bulls during mating season.

Though it was a little out of character for him, Batman was the first to break the silence. "No one wants to be the villain in their own story," he said, "but if this hits the fan, and Joe Callaghan goes down, there will be no washing your hands clean of this. All these dead-end leads have their origins in Joe, but if it weren't for you, he would have never had the chance to square off against the Joker."

"I have faith in him..." Jim said in a gruff voice, though it was strangely calm considering his outburst just a moment ago. He'd turned to look at his shoes, watching the gravel scatter underneath his feet as he shuffled nervously.

"And faith exists beyond reason. Justice for this city too often comes from the heart, when men like you should be using their heads. Keep a close eye on Joe Callaghan... catching him in the act might be the only way you can end up redeeming yourself."

Jim scoffed and shook his head. "Well... maybe we all have a little too much faith in me," he said, his voice full of sorrow when he looked up.

True to his form, Batman was gone... and left only the wisp of the cold spring air to comfort Jim and his shortcomings.


	56. Chapter 56: Seek

"...and that's what I'm trying to tell you!" Bosco's adamant voice echoed through the warehouse loft as if he'd been speaking through a megaphone. "You were right, Jokerman. I tailed the Callaghan punk right to a warehouse, and from there, I tailed a black van right to Arkham."

Harley was apprehensive as she came down the stairs. She'd been distracted from her reading when she heard the Joker's right-hand man come up the elevator, but had stayed out of sight for as long as she could, straining to hear the conversation between the two. The irony of the Joker was, when he wasn't 'on' - which was a rare occurrence – he was actually soft-spoken; so much that Harley had a hard time hearing him. After a few minutes, she gave up entirely, gingerly traipsing down the stairs, tagging onto the tail end of their conversation.

"You said they left with something. What was it?" Joker asked, his eyes flashing back and forth behind his half-moon glasses as he watched the four television screens before him.

Bosco scoffed in frustration. "I couldn't make out the details. Most of them carried only guns, but one of them looked to be carrying a stack of paper."

"Stack of paper?" Harley asked aloud, her sudden emergence into the conversation causing the Joker to sigh heavily in exasperation.

She placed a hand on a jutting hip; she knew he could not see her, but her tone proclaimed all the defiance that her posture could not, "What? They could have left with any one of the finest psychopaths this city has to offer, and they left with a stack of paper?" she asked, stepping over to the sofa where the Joker was seated cross legged, forever making his notes.

It was so hard to not be impressed as he sat there, writing, watching television, and arguing with her all at the same time. "It's not that they left with paper. If they ran out of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven, they'd go to Kinko's. It's what _on_ the paper that makes me nervous..."

"Why? There's nothing in Arkham on you anymore. I destroyed your real file when I came for you. I gave Jeremiah a fake... all the information in it was just chicken scratch. Most of it was the script from _Pulp Fiction_, if you must know..." Harley sat down on the opposite side of the sofa, inspecting her fingernails with a firm sense of pride on her face.

Rolling his eyes and ripping his glasses off his face, he picked up the remote and hit the pause button, freezing the images on the television news reports, though the episode of _Inspector Gadget _continued to play. "I know, I was there," he told her with a huff, "and I don't think they left with any of my paperwork, but it doesn't exactly take a mastermind to see what they want, and what they're willing to do to get it."

Harley and Bosco shared an apprehensive glance. Try as they might to keep up with him, they were usually always a couple steps behind the Joker.

He looked back and forth between the both of them, clearly unimpressed by their silence. His expression fell flat as the end of his pen tapped impatiently on the pages of his notebook. "I'm drownin' in assholes..." He tossed the notebook on the table, standing up with a deep sigh as he shuffled past Bosco to retrieve himself another cup of coffee.

"Alright then, if you're so smart..." Harley started, her assertive tone fading when the Joker shot a venomous glare at her over his shoulder. "What are they after? What do they want? You better let us know, since you seem to be the only one in the city who has any idea."

Pulling the pot from off the burner, the Joker filled a porcelain cup and took a sip, then turned back to address all their burning curiosity. "Is it hard walking through life where your brain gets all choked up at just the very whisper of something deadly coming your way? Sometimes I wonder how you both remember to breathe." He didn't allow either of them the chance to rip into him before he jumped back into it. "Alright! Now, try to remember for a moment the first time we placed eyes on the mysterious SWAT team..."

Harley remembered the scene as if it had been yesterday. "Yeah, I remember... on the television. They shot Brutus Carpozo in the head." The scene had terrified her back then; now, no more than half a year later, she'd seen, and done, far worse.

"And they told us back then exactly what they wanted, but nobody was listening. Everyone was too busy being scared to listen. There you are, your kid is watching Spongebob and you're sitting there drinking a coffee, pretending to listen to their whining, and then all of a sudden, _bang._ You're not paying attention to what's being said. You're thinking: _'Holy shit, they're gonna kill that guy!'_" The Joker explained, his mouth moving a mile a minute to illustrate the frantic scene going on in the mind of the everyman.

Harley couldn't help but feel a little defensive. "Well, you know it's not everyday that someone gets shot in the head on television."

"That's right!" he cut in immediately. "And they screwed it up by shooting Carpozo right there and then, because no one listened to what it was they had to say."

"Except you, of course," Harley grunted in a snide tone, her arms crossed skeptically over her chest.

"Well, of course! _Someone_ has to know what the hell is going on." He moved back to the couch, picking up the remote control and thumbing the button for the digital video recorder. "You put the clip on here, didn't you, Bos?" he asked, scanning through the selected recordings.

"Yeah, right there, right there!" Bosco chimed out, pointing to one dated about six months prior, toward the end of the list of numerous news clippings and reruns of _My Little Pony_.

Aiming the remote deliberately toward one of the screens, he selected the play button and the three of them watched the familiar scene in which one of the SWAT team members held a gun to the head of Brutus Carpozo.

From the other end of the couch, Harley shivered and sat herself back in the corner of the cushions. "Do we really need to watch this again? I had enough of this to first time around."

"Contrary to what you might think, I'm not particularly interested in seeing Carpozo's brains turned into egg salad. I'm more interested in hearing what the SWAT team has to say," the Joker said, and turned on closed captioning, the black and white script jumping across the bottom of one of his four screens.

"_Due to recent developments, the GCPD has proven itself incapable of protecting the citizens of Gotham, and opt for uncertain and lazy action, if any at all. Gotham placed its hope within vigilantes and men clad in makeup to change its mentality, to no avail."_ Joke pressed the pause button and looked up to Bosco, who offered him an apprehensive glance.

"Oh, c'mon! Break it down. What's the first thing he says? What's the first thing that comes out of his mouth?" he asked, exasperated at the apparent lack of brainwaves being emitted throughout the room. He turned from Bosco to Harley, extending a pleading hand out to her. "You must have some idea, you're a _doctor_ for fuck's sake!"

"He said that the GCPD is incapable of doing their job," Harley said. "He's basically talking about their reliance on Batman to get anything done."

The Joker appeared pleased. "Oh, thank God! I was beginning to think you'd replaced your brain with mothballs," he chided her comically, smirking as he turned back to hit the play button once again.

"_Fear, chaos, mystery... we are the remedy to these diseases. We are blunt, focused, and efficient. Gotham is surrounded by men who call themselves heroes, warriors of a noble calling."_

The scene was just as haunting the second time around, and Harley had begun to turn her head away from the screen to avoid seeing the shower of blood that she knew was sure to follow. Thankfully, the Joker hit the pause button again, and the three of them watched a freeze frame of the clip, the late Brutus Carpozo flinching away from the sound of the cocking gun.

The Joker appeared satisfied. That was the line he was looking for. "'We are the remedy to these diseases...'" he recited again and looked to Harley. "So, now is it so hard to see what they want?"

She smiled. "They want to succeed where the GCPD has failed. What they really want is to stop _us_, stop the Batman... and it from the sounds of it, Jim Gordon as well," she explained, leaning her head back with a faint smirk toward the ceiling.

"That's right, but I don't know what _you're_ smiling about..." he muttered with chagrin as he settled himself into his familiar cross-legged style, lifting his mug to take another sip of his coffee. The Joker had an astonishing way of simplifying things, and to top it all off, he didn't scare incredibly easily. It gave him the kind of concentration and focus one needed in order to see things clearly, not to scatter and scream like the pathetic, worried masses.

Scoffing, Harley shrugged and lifted her head, glancing over at him with a chuckle. "Oh, c'mon Joker... you can't possibly take these schmucks seriously! Besides stealing guns from inside the MCU, shooting Carpozo in the head, and chasing after your guys in the truck, what exactly have they done to deserve your respect? They've had plenty of chances to provoke a confrontation out of the police, out of the Batman... hell, even out of you, but they've hardly jumped at the opportunity."

"Remember what I told you about _'those few moments of unadulterated joy'_?" he asked her and lifted a brow as he glanced back over to the other side of the sofa. "If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that if you're not making your move, than you're _preparing_ to make your move... and the fact that they've been quiet for so long makes me think that they're getting ready for something big."

"And how can you be so sure, hmm? There's no proof that they're on to us. Say what you want about them... if they knew where we were, if they knew _anything_ about us, then it wouldn't take them _six months _to come up with a plan of attack... unless they score a _'shitty'_ in the strategy department," Harley laughed, hoping that she would ease the Joker's suspicions... but the next thing he said put her more on edge than she'd ever been regarding this mysterious SWAT team.

"Maybe... but that doesn't mean they're not working on it. I figure they are, considering they took your file from Arkham Asylum last night," he said, as though it had been common knowledge this entire time.

Nervously, Harley and Bosco exchanged glances, and then turned to look back at the Joker. "Wha'chu you talkin' about Jokerman? I didn't tell you that, I just said they left with paper!" Bosco exclaimed to him before Harley had even had the chance to talk.

"Use your brain! Why else would they go to Arkham? To get the crazies on their side? No... the lunatics smell a little too much like me, and they've made it pretty clear that they don't like me very much. My file might have been destroyed, but did you even think twice to destroy yours?" the Joker asked, turning back to Harley with a look that said he already knew the answer.

A look of terror passed over her face. "B...but there's nothing in there that could lead them to me... to us... to here?"

"Maybe not right to our front door, but that file contains your psychiatric evaluations from when you started working at Arkham, notes on your meetings with the _'Good Doctor',_ and progress updates on my therapy," he explained, and for a moment Harley had to wonder how he knew all of that. "Safe to say, having their hands on that file is going to be pretty beneficial."

She was dumbfounded. It wasn't a secret that Dr. Quinzel was the person behind the Harleyquinn persona, and knowing so much detailed information could prove potentially lethal. She sat on the sofa, her gaze staring forward at the men who stood still in time on the television, the barrel of his gun pointed so precariously against the temple of the doomed Brutus Carpozo. For a minute she felt as though they were holding that barrel flush against her head, taking their time to pull the trigger.

"So what now, J?" Bosco asked finally, hoping that despite all of this that the Joker would pull an ace from a carefully concealed hiding place.

Much to Harley's chagrin, he sighed heavily with defeat. "Well, one thing's for sure..." he said solemnly, "I'm not gonna sit around here and wait for them to make their move."


	57. NOTE

I'm back. New Chapters coming soon (end of the month). Thank you all for remaining so dedicated.

- Shanghai1875


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